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January 4, 2005
Keeping our Nerve
Once again we are seeing calls to delay the elections in Iraq. I wrote about this last month and came to the conclusion that they needed to go ahead as scheduled. The risks of proceeding, I decided, were outweighed by the risks of delaying them.
A story on Fox News today reports that calls to delay them have not abated
More Iraqi interim government officials are calling for the postponement of Jan. 30 elections to ensure a higher Sunni voter turnout, a sign that a campaign of violence might be taking its toll on Iraqi resolve. The country's electoral commission, however, insists that voting take place as scheduled.Tellingly it is Sunni's who are calling for a boycott. Indeed, the largest Sunni party said that they will not participate, due to security concerns. The Iraqi election commission is determined that elections go ahead as scheduled.
We should be wary of taking everything we hear from those who suggest delay at face value. Most of the terrorism is coming from the "Sunni Triangle", and is committed by Sunnis. Many of the Sunni political parties undoubtably have ties or at least open lines of communications with the terrorist insurgents. It is inconceiveable that they are perfectly innocent politicians. More likely they are in the mold of Sein Fein and the IRA.
One therefore suspects that these Sunni political parties could put a serious dent in the terrorism if they really wanted to. More likely, like Sein Fein, they know that in a true "one-man, one-vote" democracy, they will not enjoy the control of Iraq that they did under Saddam.
Powerline blog reported last month on a poll in which 80% of Iraqis did not want to delay the elections. Anyone who things we have problems now should try and imagine the anger of millions of Iraqis at a delay. Remember; things can always get worse.
Victor Davis Hanson reminded us in November of how things will look in the future if we do not loose our nerve at this critical juncture;
There may well be even more terrible things to come in Iraq than what we have seen already, but there will also be far better things than were there before. And there will come a time, when all those who slandered the efforts — the Germans, the French, the American radical Left, the vicious Michael "Minutemen" Moore, the pampered and coddled Hollywood elite, the Arab League, and the U.N. will assume that Iraq is a "good thing" like Afghanistan, and that democracy there really was preferable — after they had so bravely weighed in with their requisite "ifs" and "buts" — to the mass murders of Saddam Hussein. Yes, they will say all this, but it will be for the rest of us to remember how it all came about and what those forgotten soldiers and people of Iraq went through to get it — lest we forget, lest we forget....
The biggest risk, of course, in proceeding with elections as scheduled is that it may lead to civil war. But on balance it would seem that the Sunnis will realize, that with their minority status, their best option for power is with the new government. The elections should proceed.
Posted by Tom at January 4, 2005 3:10 PM
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