The election won't solve anything.

[JohnnyMarzetti]

In less than two weeks Iraqis will be going to the polls to elect a national assembly. An election in the middle of a very violent rebellion. Most of Leilah Nadir's family lives in Baghdad. That's why she follows events there closely. On Commentary, she says the election won't solve anything.


Leilah Nadir:

I'm eligible to vote in the Iraqi election. Even though I'm Canadian and have never set foot in Iraq I can vote because my father was born there, though he left the country more than 40 years ago. It's just another one of the bizarre features of this election. I mean, why should I have the same voting rights as the people who live there and have endured such terrible suffering over the past two decades?

Needless to say I won't be voting. It's not a legitimate election, nor will it free, fair or safe. Iraq is occupied by a huge foreign army; these elections are being held at the end of the barrel of a gun. Outside powers like the U.S., Britain and even Iran have dictated the shape of the elections and stand to gain from them. The Iraqi people do not.

Many Iraqis suspect that the sole purpose of these elections is so that the Americans and British can claim to have brought democracy to Iraq, to appease their voters and legitimize their puppet regime.

Supposedly, once Iraqis are running Iraq the violence and insecurity will end. But each day the violence escalates. I believe it will continue to escalate until the Americans leave.

It's ironic that people like me in 14 countries can vote, but big areas inside Iraq will be off limits to voters because it's not safe.

And even in safe areas people have no idea who to vote for and what the outcome will be. The entire election process is confusing and unfamiliar.

The election is to choose a national assembly of 275 people who will appoint an interim government and write a constitution. On the book-length ballot are the names of 100 political parties. But only the heads of each party are named; the actual candidates aren't for fear of assassination. So people won't know who they're voting for.

Oh, and the international election observers? They'll be based in Amman, Jordan. How on earth will they determine if the election is free from Amman?

I could ask my family in Iraq who they plan to vote for, but two years after the invasion their phone still doesn't work. They're more worried about surviving amid bombings, kidnappings, and a lack of jobs, electricity, fuel and health care. Hardly the atmosphere for an election.

Instead of a democratic process they see it as a ploy to put Allawi in power with the Americans running the country from behind the scenes. Whatever the outcome no one expects the occupation and the resistance to it to stop. And if the Shiites don't win, they may claim foul and join the resistance.

I've heard there's a saying now in Iraq that captures the feeling about his election beautifully. Mothers use it to scold their children. "Be good or democracy will get you."

For Commentary, I'm Leilah Nadir in Vancouver.

http://www.cbc.ca/insite/COMMENTARY/2005/1/18.html

[Hook Dem]

Johnny, you just want anything remotely connected to Bush to fail don't you? This is why I call you juvenile. You are an American hoping for failure???????

[Yonivore]

That's what they said in Algeria...

For more than 10 years the [GIA] terrorists held the initiative, attacking where and when they wished, forcing the government’s forces into a defensive posture. The terrorists specialized in mass killings. In Bin Talha, a suburb of the capital Algiers, for example, they cut the throats of some 800 people, mostly women and children, in a single night. They also targeted the ordinary personnel of the army and the police, in the hope of discouraging young Algerians from enlisting in government forces.

Like the Iraqi insurgency, part of which desires a return to Baathist power, part of which desires a pure Islamic state, the GIA did not offer Algerian citizens a viable alternative to the Algerian government. Their goal of creating an oppressive Islamic state along the lines of Afghanistan’s Taliban was unpopular. The GIA could only intimidate their neighbors.

Algerian terrorists never came up with anything resembling a political program. They just killed people. They killed children on their way to school. They chopped the heads of Christian monks and Muslim muftis. They murdered trade unionists, political leaders, and journalists. They captured teenage girls and forced them into temporary marriages with “the holy warriors.” They seized hostages, burned schools and hospitals, blew up factories and shops, and did all they could to disrupt the economy. At times they pulled off spectacular coups, for example by murdering the country’s president, and its most prominent trade union leader.

Iraqi insurgents are furiously working to attack Iraqi institutions and civil servants poll workers and organizers, police, soldiers, and interim government officials; and infrastructure such as the water, oil and electricity industries. In Algeria the GIA attempted to destroy the foundations of civil society. The Algerian Army was targeted to reduce its effectiveness, and democratic elections were opposed by any and all means.

They pursued two objectives. The first was to destroy the Algerian Army by killing as many recruits as they could in the hope that this would provoke mass desertions.

The second was to prevent the holding of any elections. “Democracy means the rule of the people,” Antar Zu’abri, one of the most notorious of the terrorist chiefs, killed in action in the 1990s, liked to say. “Those who want the rule of the people defy the rule of God, which is Islam.”

Eventually, the Algerian government learned that democracy was the only way to sideline the insurgency. Elections gave the fence sitters – those who despised the violent tactics of the GIA but lacked the courage or means to oppose them – an opportunity to take sides in the war and empower their government to fight the brutal terrorists. Elections in Algeria effectively split the moderates from the extremists by asking them to chose sides and take responsibility for their future.

They soon realized that the terrorists lacked a significant popular base. But it was also clear that a majority of Algerians had adopted a wait-and-see attitude, hating the terrorists in secret but too frightened of them to make a clear stand against them in public. The key, therefore, was to mobilize the “silent majority” to demonstrate the isolation of the terrorists.

The most effective way to do that was to hold elections. Few people are prepared to die, and even fewer are willing to kill in support of their political opinions. But almost everyone is ready to vote. The task of a civilized society is to render the expression of political opinions easy. The terrorists made it difficult because they demanded of the people to kill [or be killed]. The Algerian leaders decided to make it easy by asking the people to vote.

The turning point came in 1995 when Algeria organized its first ever pluralist and direct presidential election. This is was not an ideal election. The candidates were little known figures that had appeared on the national political scene just a couple of years earlier. None presented a coherent political program. To make matters worse the terrorists did all they could to prevent the election. They burned down voter registration bureaus and murdered election officers. Masked men visited people in their homes and shops to warn that going to the polls would mean death.

And, yet, when polling day came it quickly became clear that the terrorists, in the forlorn attempt at stopping democracy, were, as in so many other instances in history, facing certain defeat. Never in my many years of journalism had I seen such enthusiasm for an electoral exercise anywhere in the world. The “silent majority” spoke by casting ballots, not because it particularly liked any of the candidates but because it wanted to send a message to the terrorists that they had no place in Algeria.

It's not just about the election, Johnny...it's about letting those, who can't pick up guns, take sides and show who really has the popular support of the Iraqi people.

[travis2]

JohnnyTheNazi doesn't believe the Iraqis can make their own decisions. Much the same as he doesn't feel minorities in this country can make their own decisions.

[GoldToe]

Apparently Bush doesn't think the Iraqi people can think for themselves either...or the American people for that matter.

[Yonivore]

Apparently Bush doesn't think the Iraqi people can think for themselves either...or the American people for that matter.
How so?

[spurster]

Hopefully, they'll elect a government that will tell the US to leave, and then the US leaves.

[Hook Dem]

Hopefully, they'll elect a government that will tell the US to leave, and then the US leaves.
There's a reasonable reply and one everyone should be able to live with.