The images of Election Day in Iraq are the kinds that linger in a person’s mind for a long time: crowds of women, smiling through their veils, as they line up to cast a ballot for the first time; scenes of women, men, and children dancing and celebrating in the streets without fear. And perhaps the most defining picture of all: a single inky finger held aloft as proof that its owner is among the 70+ per cent of Iraqi citizens who defied reliable threats of violence to cast a vote for a free and open society.
Just days before the election took place, I wrote elsewhere that “Voter turnout on Jan. 30 will prove absolutely vital in determining how representative, and in turn how legitimate, the new government will be.” In that regard, the vote surpassed my wildest expectations. The people turned out in overwhelming numbers, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that fascist terrorist thugs told them they dare not. They insisted on remaining at polling stations, even after suffering attacks by suicide bombers, until their ballot could be properly cast. Those that paid the ultimate price for exercising their rights were venerated as heroes and buried as martyrs. Such devotion to the democratic process has few parallels anywhere in our own history.
Now, as the votes are counted and the future of the new Iraq begins to take shape, so too must we take stock of the many pernicious myths that have been dispelled in the space of one fateful day. Occupying the top of this list is the racist myth of Arab and Muslim incompatibility with democracy, which was doubly disproved in recent months by the Iraqi and the Palestinian elections. Not only are the Arab people capable of electing representative governments, they will exercise this basic right with an arresting determination that puts the Western world to shame. This is one more useless remnant of Orientalism that we may cast into the proverbial dustbin of history.
Then there is the myth of the unstoppable guerrilla insurgency: those ex-Baathist and jihadist murderers whose only hope of seizing power lay in derailing the election. There was no clearer sign of the weakness and desperation of the insurgents than the threat issued just days before the election by terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who declared all Iraqis who voted were infidels and apostates deserving death. With that one statement, Zarqawi made himself and his organization the mortal enemy of the majority of Iraqis and, one suspects, probably boosted overall turnout. If the election was a referendum on the insurgency, then its very occurrence represents a defeat for Zarqawi’s ideology of theocratic nihilism more stunning than any inflicted by the American military.
Once all the votes are counted, it will take weeks and months of political deal-making and coalition-building before a functional government emerges to carry out the work of ratifying a new constitution. We are still a long way away from the time when the security situation will permit the complete withdrawal of American troops.
But the essential correctness of US policy in Iraq has now been confirmed. Democratic reform in the Middle East is not only possible; it is happening right now, and no force on earth can hold it back.
