Voting for a New Government: Iraqi Elections 2005

Wikipedia has less on what's going on at the moment, but a little more on the political background to the election. Iraq the Model has been continually updating with some great insight as well as beautiful pictures from on the ground. And Pajamas Media has got Iraqi bloggers from Erbil, Kirkuk, Mosul, Babil, Najaf, Kerbala, Samawa, Basra, and Baghdad to liveblog the elections.

Preliminary information suggests the largest turnout yet, but we've come to expect no less from the brave people of Iraq.

That is what I really want to talk about--the Iraqi elections in 2005. If what you want is the most recent and most accurate information on what is happen at this very moment, I suggest you follow the links at the beginning of this post.

In the heightened partisan environment that surrounded the 2004 elections, even the optimists and supporters of the War were expecting nothing short of a bloodbath for the first elections in Iraq.

January 30, 2005 is a day that I will probably never forget. It was anything but a bloodbath, but more importantly, a huge amount of Iraqis went to the polls in defiance of Zarqawi and his thugs. In their very first democratic action, the Iraqis had a turnout of 58 percent--with regional turnout going as high as 89 perent in Kurdish Dahuk, a region with an ethnic population that had suffered perhaps the worst atrocities of the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.

Even the optimists were kind of left with our jaws hanging.

In October, Iraqis again went to the polls, this time to determine the shape of their government by ratifying, or rejecting, the proposed constitution. Turnout was even higher, as Sunnis who had boycotted the January election had come to realize that it was in their interest to influence the process as much as possible rather than ignore it completely. In other words, the bravery of the mass numbers of Shiite and Kurdish Iraqis who voted in spite of threats of violence in January has made progress possible and given the Sunnis and insentive to invest themselves in the new government. The minority of Sunnis who did vote in January should not be ignored, either--in many ways, their bravery was the greatest of all.

Of course, this time the Iraqis had set high expectations already, and so the media was not predicting a bloodbath--and dedicated most of their attention elsewhere. But that's ok--they'll talk about whatever they want to talk about. That's their business.

Now the Iraqis have voted again, but this time, it was a little different. This is their government now, not a preliminary one. And this is the first time that they can say they're voting in officials to serve specific sets of duties that the Iraqi people themselves approved of. Even the most extreme of Sunnis are buying into the process. And from the look of things so far, Iraq is leaving us in the dust where democracy is concerned, with lines so long they had to extend voting hours.

I am going to drop the persuasive arguments here, and just give you my own naive personal beliefs.

I believe that Iraq will become a stable democracy with less and less use for our support. I believe that this was a war worth fighting and that it remains so.

2005 has been a bitch in more ways than one, but I'll always be grateful for the role the Iraqis played in it. In huge numbers which only grew with each opportunity, they risked life and limb to cast their ballots and shape their own history. In doing so, they have revitalized a faith in democracy in me that was never small but nonetheless has never been as strong as it is today.

To the citizens of Iraq, from one inconsequential American spectator--thank you, and I hope the fruits of your efforts will be enjoyed by your desendents for generations to come.