Election Day in Iraq

A number of people e-mailed me the following article from the archives of the New York Times this week: From the New York Times, September 4, 1967:

U.S. ENCOURAGED BY VIETNAM VOTE, OFFICIALS CITE 83% TURNOUT DESPITE VIETCONG TERROR.

By Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam. The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February. The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

* * * *

Built into the very core of what it means to be human is a predisposition to smile and hope for the best for any person who attains even a small, symbolic portion of self-determination, and therefore the world rightly celebrates the images of Iraqi citizens casting ballots this week. It's always a beautiful thing.

But we know too well that there's more to elections, and to democracy, than casting votes. To make it all work and to make it all last, votes have to be counted first, the winners empowered to execute their duties, and the laws enacted and enforced efficient for enhancing the lives and aspirations of the people. Sincere best wishes to the Iraqi people in the pursuit of these lofty goals, but it does not appear President Bush's plans, to put it mildly, will help.

In his State of the Union address last night, President Bush made it clear that he considers Sunday's election in Iraq far from the end of the road for stability and the U.S. military's role in that country.

Listening carefully to what he had to say about his deliberate lack of any time table for the departure of U.S. troops from the region, Bush presented three conditions for leaving that, when examined, are manifestly unattainable.

The first condition is the securing of democracy domestically in Iraq. The second is for Iraq to be “at peace with its neighbors.” The third is for Iraq “to be capable of defending itself.”

So what, exactly, is involved in these three conditions?

In the first case, securing democracy inside Iraq means the complete suppression of the insurgency and time-worn ethnic rivalries in that nation. But it is a “Catch-22” that the longer U.S. forces are there, the worse the insurgency will get. There is no solution to that enigma except a strategy for handing over domestic security to the Iraqis, themselves, sooner rather than later. Right now, very little serious training of Iraqi troops and military leadership personnel is occurring. If American troops remain in Iraq until the nation is fully pacified, it will simply never happen.

In the second case, Bush delivered the “key and code words” for not a diminished, but an expanded U.S. military role in the region, including U.S. aggression against both Iran and Syria, which intelligence experts have been warning about for months. He called for Iraq to be “at peace with its neighbors” (who happen to be Iran and Syria) as a condition for U.S. troops leaving. But earlier in his speech last night, Bush singled out Syria and Iran as key strategic terrorist threats to the U.S. Poignantly, he did not mention North Korea, but limited his “evil empire” list to two neighbors of Iraq, both within striking distance of existing U.S. forces. Bush has no intention of Iraq “being at peace with its neighbors,” but used this phrase to signal plans to widen U.S. aggression in the region.

In the third case, the condition is rendered moot by the realities of the first two. When would Iraq ever be able to “defend itself” in the regional imbroglio that Bush is cooking up for his second term?

Nicholas Benton may be emailed at nfbenton@fcnp.com