November 29, 2005
To All You Naysayers on Iraq
By Dennis
Byrne
Another Iraqi
election will be held in a few weeks, so it's time for anti-war
partisans to crank up the usual warnings that it'll be a big flop.
Like former
President Jimmy Carter did before the January elections for Iraq's
constitutional delegates. His prediction of a dismal turnout was
wildly inaccurate, as were prophesies of doom for the October
referendum that ratified a constitution, which, by the way, they
said would never be drafted.
Funny, though,
with the Dec. 15 general election of 275 members to a permanent
Iraqi National Assembly approaching, the customary warnings have
yet to materialize. Maybe I missed them. Maybe the anti-war partisans
are just late getting started. Or maybe they only need a jump
start, which I'm glad to provide. Or they figure that if they
keep their mouths shut, no one will notice another successful
turnout.
It's foolhardy
to predict what will happen in Iraq, so I'll not make the same
mistake by prophesying that the elections will be a rousing success.
Even though Iraqis themselves have demonstrated by their voting
habits that they like to practice democracy.
At least
as much as we do in Chicago.
"Some
candidates got 80 or 90 percent of the vote," the partisans
whined about the earlier Iraqi election. "In some precincts,
more votes were cast than there were voters." "The turnout
was too high to be believable." "Ballot box stuffing."
"Election fraud!" "Intimidation!" Sound familiar?
Little of
this turned out to be true in Iraq, yet partisans here don't take
it as a sign of a failed election when a Chicago alderman captures
90 percent or more of the vote. Ballot box stuffing, dead people
voting and election fraud are rampant here, but no one insists
that they make the election a failure. Actually, in some ways,
Chicago is worse: While about 70 political parties ran candidates
in the first Iraqi election, Chicago has only one party. Chicago
is prime territory for a caravan of Carter election monitors.
One comparatively
good thing you might say for Chicago-style democracy is that at
least no one goes around kidnapping, murdering and beheading the
opposition. At least not as far as I know.
The point?
The heroic Iraqi citizens have traveled a more dangerous road
toward democracy more rapidly then anyone ever expected, making
that another part of the "failed war plan," I assume.
Can we agree that it's great for Iraq, the Middle East and for
us? Or perhaps you can't share this enthusiasm because you hate
the Bushies so much that a part of you hopes the elections fail.
But if you
agree that this march toward democracy is excellent progress,
you might wonder, as I do: Why is the criticism of the Iraq war
ramping up at this exact moment? What good can it do the elections?
If you care about 27 million Iraqis tasting freedom for the first
time, wouldn't you do everything you can to make those elections
a rousing success, instead of making Iraqis wonder whether the
Americans supporting their aspirations would high-tail it out
of there? Leaving them, like we did in the gulf war, only to be
slaughtered. With Americans in a growing brawl over whether Iraqi
freedom is worth the price, who could blame the Iraqis for throwing
in the towel and not voting?
Worse, leaving
freedom-loving Iraqis to twist in the wind also leaves us without
a coherent strategy for fighting the war on terror. President
Bush's larger strategy goals always have been well-known (contrary
to his critics' ill-informed attacks), and you could reasonably
disagree with them. But few, if any, have explained how immediate
troop withdrawal would contribute to a new and better strategy
for fighting Islamic fanatics in their jihad against their own
people and us. Pulling our troops just over the horizon to Kuwait
to constitute a "quick strike" force, as Rep. John Murtha
(D-Pa.) suggests, won't, because our presence anywhere in Islamic
lands is what helps fuel the fanatics' violent hatred.
Our absence
would come as millions of Muslims have demonstrated their growing
commitment to freedom and loathing of terrorists. More are ratting
out terrorists in their own neighborhoods or joining their own
self-defense forces. Some 200,000 Jordanians marched in defiance
of Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is intensifying
the violence against these freedom-seekers, and their government
is responding.
Understand,
I'm not saying that abandoning the Iraqis now is unpatriotic.
Just mistaken and an unconscionable betrayal.
Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and consultant. E-mail:
dennis@dennisbyrne.net
