January 31, 2005
Freedom in Iraq
The President's critics have a new line, which is very good news indeed; I was extremely bored with all of their old ones. The new line is Senator Kerry's: yeah, the vote is cool, but the hard part of building a democracy remains.
It would be naive to think that problems are over. The tough slog of legislating a Constitution, counting votes, creating coalitions all remain. And Gouverneur Morris and James Madison are both dead.
Yet these same critics warned us of: "The Brutal, Afghan Winter," "Afghanistan: the Burial Ground of Empires," "Chemical Weapons in Iraq," "Quagmire," Dinesh D'Souza talked about "The party of Yea and the party of Nah," it was a different context but it transfers easily.
The WSJ Ed Page has a great lead editorial today, a great piece from IraqTheModel blog, and on the paid site, yet another great piece from Michael Rubin of AEI: Iraq Has Voted.
I'm fine basking in the glow for a couple of days, but Rubin speaks to some good indicators for an inchoate Iraqi acceptance of compromise and coalition.
With travel restrictions lifted, Iraqis rediscovered their country. Arabs booked Kurdish hotels solid five months in advance. Kurdish colleagues from the University of Sulaymani visited college friends in Basra for the first time since the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. Freedom to travel moderated religious extremism. "During Saddam's day, I didn't know much about Iran. I figured since it was a Shia government, it would be a utopia," a Shia schoolteacher told me in a Karbala coffee shop. "Now that I've been to Iran, I realize how wrong I was." Free to study the teachings of traditional scholars, populists like Moqtada al-Sadr hemorrhaged support. In the alleys and squares around Shia shrines in Kadhimiya, Karbala and Najaf, merchants began selling not only long-banned religious books, but Western magazines as well.Despite doomsday predictions of civil war, Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen learned to compromise. In May 2003, under the watchful eye of a colonel from the 173rd Airborne, Kurds displaced from the Kirkuk region negotiated with Arab farmers to divide the wheat harvest. Before re-flooding marshes drained by Saddam Hussein's government and given as agricultural land to Baathist loyalists, fishermen and farmers sat down in al-Amarah to discuss revenue sharing and compensation.
Democracy is a process, and Iraq has only started along its arduous path. But already, the transformation is vast. In January 2004, in the southern Iraqi town of Nasiriya, hundreds packed an auditorium for a town-hall meeting. For three hours, residents peppered their mayor and city councilmen with questions ranging from electricity rationing to property disputes to questions regarding licensing of a local radio station. The Iraqis raised their hands and made their statements with respect. They had learned the meaning of tolerance, debate and compromise. In February 2004, I witnessed a similar scene in the largely Sunni Arab city of Baquba. Across the Arab world, politicians lecture to the people. Only in Iraq is the opposite true.
[...]
While the Arab Middle East is dominated by single parties and strongmen, the transitional Iraqi government will be a coalition. Already, in smoky backrooms and parlors, Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shia are meeting to strike deals and hammer out policy. Every Iraqi may not vote, but they now have a choice of candidates and parties denied to millions of Egyptians, Saudis and Syrians, let alone more than a billion Chinese. Iraqis may fear violence, but they no longer fear speech or thought.
UPDATE: The best example of the genre is the summation to Spencer Ackerman's piece in TNR: "In Maryland yesterday, the hopes and enthusiasms of Iraqi voters were on proud display. But so were signs of the difficulties to come."