Iraq Votes; The Troops Stay

This Sunday last, there was an election in Iraq; a rarity there, because it was a free election.

Among other things, the Iraqis are electing a 275-member national assembly that will in turn select a president and a committee for drafting a constitution.

While the election was free , it was undertaken by an country under the military occupation of  US and Britain. The voters and voting places were protected by US and British troops. And in order to prevent attacks, the entire country was literally locked down. Nevertheless, most people of good will throughout the world supported it and a lot of Iraqis braved car bombs, RPGs , mortars and AK 47s in order to vote.

Well, more power to them.

Many Iraqis not only voted, but celebrated their vote in defiance of the insurgents by literally dancing in the streets. Those same streets, that on a daily basis are the focus of so much bloodshed.

So they’ve got reason to celebrate. And they should take a bow for what they’ve done.

But, as someone once said, it isn’t the first election that counts, so much as the next. And the next. Yes, and the next after that. Too often, elections such as the one we’ve witnessed in Iraq turn out to be one-off events. Given a little time, the old ways have a way of returning.

It goes like this: tribal conflict, corruption, then factional fighting, then assassination, then coup attempts and finally all-out civil war. Duly elected presidents and prime ministers in places like Iraq have a history of becoming self-appointed dictators for life. There’s no reason to suppose the same thing will not happen in Iraq. It’s certainly happened before. And given the fact that some Iraqi politicians are former members of the Baath party, while others are Moslem clerics of one stripe or another and given the fact that many candidates were to frightened to even identify themselves in public, there’s no telling what kind of electoral mess the US and Britain are getting into.  Or what it might evolve into. 

And since no party or individual has campaigned in public, for obvious reasons, it is hard to know if anyone voting really knew who or what he or she was actually voting for.

Of course, you’d never know that from listening to all the pundits, politicians, neocon hacks, and Fox News blowhards flooding the talk shows. There’s been an election they shout, so everything is wonderful. The way they carry on, you’d think that Iraq is now a democratic Utopia, or will become one soon.

The endless stream of back-slapping self-congratulatory rhetoric about how wonderful the events in Iraq turned out, drown out the reality of the 44 Iraqi civilians who died last Sunday. Not to mention the American and British soldiers who were killed as well.

No one yet knows how many voters actually turned out, or how the vote will break down as among the hundred or so political parties.

What’s forgotten too, is the fact that in order for the elections to take place, all 150,000 American troops and the British contingent had to guard the polling places. This was largely because to one could trust the Iraqi security forces with the job.

Which means, that unless US and British troops remain in Iraq for a long time, it is unlikely democracy, long-term, will ever take hold.

Mr Bush and the neocon know this and already there are plans for permanent military concessions in Iraq. While we are told regularly that the US would leave Iraq if asked to by whatever new government comes to power, the fact of the matter is, that the new government will only stay in power if held up by US and British bayonets.  What politician will call for an end to occupation, if by doing so, he jeopardizes his own power, and perhaps even his own life? There’s no reason to assume the bloody insurgency now taking place will stop simply because an election has taken place.

It looks like the troops won't  be coming home any time soon.

Stay tuned....

Punditwalla--