Iraq Election Myths
It was a historic day, January 30th, 2005. It was a day the world heard from the Iraqis themselves for the first time since the war, and many myths were shattered.
One prediction of low voter turnout was predicated on the existence of rampant anti-occupation sentiment. Another was based on the terrorists’ promise of 400 suicide bombers. A third was that, after years of brutal dictatorship, Iraqis were apathetic, cowed, and not “politically mature” enough to turn out.
When the day came, some Iraqis walked thirteen miles to vote and then stood in line for hours. Many brought their children to the polls to witness the occurrence. The elderly unable to walk were carried in arms or pushed on wagons. Having voted, Iraqis danced in the streets, kissed the ballot box, wept. Many voted remembering family members who had died at the hand of Saddam’s regime.
The Iraqi elections under occupation and under credible threats from terrorists had a turnout about the same as the highest in US history, 63% in 1960. Indeed some in the media had difficulty accepting the reality of the high voter turnout. “Hollow Elections Held on a Bloody Day,” one news headline read. It was a bloody day. Twenty-five people were reported murdered, but when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a polling station in the Mansour province, the would-be Iraqi voters stayed in line and asked that the station remain open.
One myth undermining the plausibility of the elections had been voiced by Zarqawi but was already circulating in the West: that democracy is “un-Islamic.” Some believed that many Muslims don’t want democracy, prefer theocracy, and support the extremists’ jihad against representative government. Yet when asked, many Iraqis said they were voting against beheading, against terrorism, and against Zarqawi. It was in part a referendum to take back Islam from the pretenders. In part it was a referendum for a democratic future.
Another myth shattered was that the insurgents are the legitimate voice of Iraq, “freedom fighters” somehow. Yet each of the nearly nine million rejected the insurgency with a personal choice as they stepped from their homes. Together they made their own insurgent army, an army of liberation.
Samir Hassan, 32, who lost his leg in a car bomb blast in October, was determined to vote. “I would have crawled here if I had to. I don’t want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me. Today I am voting for peace,” he said.
Some cling to the notion that the dispossessed elite are the only real Iraqis. Columnist Robert Fisk deemed the election “a bloody charade” and said “the real story” was outside Baghdad in the “in the four Sunni Muslim provinces which are at the heart of Iraq’s insurrection.” How the millions who took back their country are not the real story is only comprehensible though the prism of anti-Americanism: the enemies of Bush are Fisk’s heroes.
Many of these western leftists failed to notice the Sunni “insurrection” is targeting Sunnis. Having failed to provoke a violent Shiite response from their campaign of bloody murder, the “insurgents” are now beating down the Sunnis with bombings and beheadings. A popular insurgency doesn’t need death threats to mange its constituency, an unpopular one does.
In Fallujah, where voters lined up all day, one resident said: “We want to be like other Iraqis, we don’t want to always be in opposition.” Some Sunnis did boycott the vote on principal. Others voted on principal. Undeniably many were denied the choice by the threats of violence from the “freedom fighters.”
Now the new defeatist myths arise. The latest fear mongering is the prediction of a coming institutionalized discrimination against the Sunni population, an impending civil war, and a Shiite crescent. Yet the biggest division in Iraq is between those who want a secular government and those who want a theocracy. Alliances cross sectarian lines when discussing the role of Islam in relation to the state, a discussion not outlawed in Iraq.
A unified national identity, impossible under Saddam, is emerging full force. “I am Iraqi,” is a frequent response to “Are you Shiite or Sunni?” Patriotism, Iraqi pride, and enthusiasm for self-determination have not been blunted by Zarqawi’s suicide bombers, the Ba’athists IED’s, the occupation’s tragedies, or the media’s dismal predictions.
The turnout for Afghanistan’s election was not an anomaly. Iraq’s election is not an anomaly. Men and women want freedom. They will go to great lengths at personal risk to insure it for themselves and their children and their country. This is no myth.
The new negativism will be shattered with time, with work, with consensus: religious and ethnic pluralism, equal dignity, and minority rights are more than possible. They are likely (after a long and loud discussion and much hand waving.) The Iraqis understand Thomas Paine’s warning: “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” Iraqis understand the mechanics of tyranny much too well to deliberately construct another.
Fisk quote: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?sf=2813&art_id=vn20050130113139150C501681&click_id=2813&set_id=1
Iraqi quotes: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006229
Hollow Elections ISPN: http://ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=27247
Paine quote: http://federalistpatriot.us/
