What Election in Iraq?

With all the instant boo-hooing about President Bush actually having the NERVE to track terrorists in this country, readers may be forgiven if they haven't heard much about a little news item that took place on Thursday. You know which one I mean: that insignificant scene of 11 millions Iraqis going to the polls to elect the first Arab democracy in the Middle East.

On the big day, my local newspaper ran the following headline on the front page above the fold: ""Vote in Iraq has citizens skeptical" with the subhead: "Many already think parliamentary elections pointless." Followed by a second story suggesting that violence had marred the elections.

They followed that manure load of Defeaticrat propaganda with a story that listed every bad thing they could think of regarding Iraq with no mention at all of the positive. I'll let you know if they print my response to such tripe.

Meanwhile, here's an excellent article of the mostly unreported story from Iraq. Read it in it's entirety. I excerpted a few gems.

The Weekly Standard "Happy Days!": 'Experts Cautious in Assessing Iraqi Election,' ran the headline on a Friday Washington Post story by Robin Wright; 'High Turnout, Low Violence a Positive Step, but Not a Turning Point, Analysts Say.'
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In Iraq, just about everyone is celebrating. "Happy days!" cheered Salim Saleh to a New York Times reporter. "Before, we had a dictator, and now we have this freedom, this democracy," Emad Abdul Jabbar, a 38-year-old Sunni, told the Times. "This time, we have a real election, not just the sham elections we had under Saddam, and we Sunnis want to participate in the political process." "We are so happy," Sahera Hashim told the Financial Times. "We hope for security, good life. We have suffered too much in the past."

The mayor of Ramadi, an insurgent and Sunni stronghold, compared the elections to a wedding: "Right now, the city is experiencing a democratic celebration." Another Sunni man told a Post reporter, "All my neighborhood is voting. God willing, after the elections things will be good."
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The biggest story of this election, apart from its obvious milestone character, is the staggeringly high Sunni turnout. In October we were being assured, by the usual experts, that the passage of the constitutional referendum was a disaster, another of many final nails in the coffin of Iraqi democracy: The Sunnis would now never participate in the electoral process. It turns out that they did participate, and they did so with eager anticipation that through the new democratic process their voices could be heard and their interests protected.

It also turns out that one of the major reasons Sunnis had not participated before was fear that they would be killed by terrorists and insurgents. This time, with 160,000 American troops and thousands of newly trained Iraqi soldiers and police, there was a sense of security. "Last time, if you voted, you died," Abdul Jabbar Mahdi, a Sunni, told the Times's Dexter Filkins. "God willing, this election will lead to peace." As Filkins notes, "Comments from Sunni voters, though anecdotal, suggested that a good number of them had stayed away from the polls in January not because they were disenchanted with the democratic process, but because they were afraid of being killed."
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Among the Sunnis he interviewed, the Times's John Burns found "a new willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, a yearning for Sunnis to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq.
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There may now be a realization among Sunnis that the insurgency is not winning, and thus may not be the best way for them to recover their lost power--or even to strengthen their bargaining position. Sunni fence sitters seem to be tilting toward involvement in the political process.

A more active counterinsurgency strategy--and the presence of 160,000 American troops--has not, as some predicted, reduced Sunni participation in the political process or engendered greater hostility and violence. On the contrary, the extra troops helped provide the security that made it safer for Sunnis and others to vote, and for democracy to take root. If American and Iraqi troops continue to provide basic security, and if Iraq's different sects and political groups now begin to engage in serious, peaceful bargaining, then we may just have witnessed the beginning of Iraq's future.

And not only Iraq's future. One 50-year-old Shiite schoolteacher told the Los Angeles Times, "I am proud as an Iraqi because our country is becoming a center of attraction for all Arab countries. The new situation in Iraq, the democratic system, is starting to put pressure on the Arab systems to make some changes toward democracy." Such thoughts cannot yet be freely expressed in the salons of Washington, D.C., and New York City. But they seem to make sense in today's Iraq.
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Burns reports that even Sunnis unhappy with the American presence favor only a "gradual drawdown," and only if Iraq has achieved a sufficient level of security and stability. "Let's have stability, and then the Americans can go home," one Iraqi store owner told Burns. Informed that President Bush was saying exactly the same thing, this man replied: "Then Bush has said it correctly".

Good Grief! Even Sunnis want Americans to stay! Somebody please call Congressman Murtha and Cindy Sheehan! And what about the "civil war" which Senator Carl Levin (Defeaticrat-MI) has claimed for the past year was just around the corner?

The only civil war we should worry about is the one Defeaticrats have waged unrelentingly against the twice elected government in the United States.