A QUESTION OF HISTORY

January 30, 2005 - Apparently 55% of the Iraqis registered to vote sought out the opportunity to vote in the first election in a half century in which they were offered a meaningful choice of candidates. That is a significant turnout – more than the United States is accustomed to have in recent years. The President called it a “resounding success” and said "The world is hearing the voice of freedom from the center of the Middle East. In great numbers and under great risk, Iraqis have shown their commitment to democracy. By participating in free elections, the Iraqi people have firmly rejected the anti-democratic ideology of terrorists.”

We may be gratified at the reported turnout, especially heavy we are told in those population centers dominated by the Shia. We must be concerned with reports that those high turnouts were balanced by participation in Sunni areas as low as the 1% reported earlier today in Ramadi, the failure of polling places in Sunni areas to even open during the election, and the reports of polls in Kurdish areas ill-supplied with election materials.

With the casualty count from attacks on polling places variously estimated at 25 to 45 Iraqis we should not minimize the courage that it took to participate in the poll or the impact of the fact that a majority of those eligible to vote actually went to the polls. What choices those voters made is yet to be announced. Until we know the result it may be a bit premature to proclaim the vote the “voice of freedom”.

What does this election mean to the future of Iraq? If, as it appears, the Shia have obtained unchallenged control of the process by which a Government for the new Iraq will be constructed and the voice of the Sunni minority has been effectively excluded it matters not if the exclusion results from a self-imposed boycott or a willful manipulation by the majority. What matters is that voice being heard is not that of a unified people but that of a segmented society with one segment having been silenced. Will it come to speak to the soul of human freedom and the heart of liberty? We cannot presume to know.

To the prevailing parties in this election falls the task of producing a constitutional framework for the new Iraqi government. Only when that document is placed before the Iraqi people for confirmation and the waiting world for evaluation will we be able to reach a considered judgment as to whether the regime it establishes advances or retards the march of freedom and liberty.

For good or for ill the President has chosen this course. For good or ill the election has been held and the United States is now bound to honor and accept its result. If the structure that emerges from the process is one that checks the arbitrary power of the numerical majority and balances the diverse interests in this tribal society then we and the world are the better off for it. If, on the other hand, the ultimate outcome is the intensification of the civil war in which the Iraqi population is already engaged and a reactionary repression of that nation’s minorities; Sunni, Kurd or Christian; by a Shi`ite majority then we and the world will witness the failure of the President’s grand experiment. Whether history will record this election as the first step in a march to democracy or as the initiation of a new tyrannical regime is a question yet to be answered.