January 29, 2005 - We are consistent in our misunderstanding. We confuse elections with democracy and democracy with responsible responsive government. As we observe the results of the makeshift electoral process being spun out in Iraq we should remind ourselves of our own history. It is not long ago in this country that had the question of strict segregation of the races been submitted to the electorate a proposition excluding Black Americans would have carried overwhelmingly. It is not that long ago that the people’s elected representatives in State after State reinforced the social acceptability of overt bigotry in America. Freedom and Liberty were then absentee values in this Constitutional Republic and too often remain conspicuously absent today.

Neither is the adoption of a Constitution as a framework of government any guarantee that the government which is instituted will safe guard individual liberty and freedom. It was in a democratic election under a constitutional government that Germany installed the regime that brought darkness to Europe for a decade. As we watch elections unfold in the midst of chaos we would do well to remember that episode of history.

Liberty and Freedom are not among the supplies issued to US GIs as they deploy to the Iraqi desert. They carry guns. They carry ammunition. They bring force not philosophy to the field of battle. They are experts in destruction not in democracy even though they fight under a banner that proclaims Liberty and Freedom. Their job, the one for which we have trained and equipped them well, is to kill not to convince their enemy. Yet there they are on the evening news, helmeted and armored distributing election handbills at the point of a gun. The implicit message contained in that image is not democratic. It is a message of coercion.

Of course the beauty of the impending election is that the Iraqi electorate will cast ballots under the threat of an insurgency that will not be put down; an insurgency that sends the message clearly that participation may be a death sentence. That the morrow’s poll will be conducted under the protection of American guns only reinforces that message. That threat is an insurance policy of sorts and a solution to the problem of democracy run amok. Should the local result not please the protector the process in that locale may be pronounced hopelessly compromised and the result ignored. In that we have experience.

We; who have worshiped our own democratic traditions; our carefully constructed edifice of power checked and power balanced; who have just emerged from our own quadrennial ritual of revolution will always see an election, however controlled, however contrived, however flawed as a ratification of the power of democracy. We read too much into the process of a plebiscite. Whatever the result of the balloting in Baghdad we are in danger of misoverestimating it. Until there is in place a structure of government free of coercion, accepted and respected and responsive to the national interests of its citizens Liberty and Freedom have not come to Iraq. That will not happen tomorrow and it may not happen in the months that follow tomorrow.