Not a week after Iraq's parliamentary elections it has been determined that life in the country will not go forth happily ever after. The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq announced early returns bespeaking a landslide victory in Iraq's central province for the United Iraqi Alliance coalition. Obloquy from rival parties followed, some of it as bad as what comes from the Democratic National Committee, including a claim from former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi that somebody in the IECI had divulged information ten days early. Disenfranchisement? Fraud? Riots in the streets? Not quite. Though Iraqi citizens are reportedly only a bit less perplexed than the IECI, tallying plods forward.
The West is, reliably, on the verge of making too much of this. Opponents of Iraqi liberalization took the news smugly. Patrick Cockburn has celebrated Iraq's parliamentary elections by twice declaiming the country in a state of disintegration. Cockburn is a killjoy epigone of Robert Fisk's, who while dismissing political triumphs in Iraq as "spurious turning points" has been pertinaciously writing in leftist publications about Iraq tumbling into bedlam since at least March of 2003, apparently on the outside chance that he will wake up one morning and not be wrong. His prognostication may be suspect.
There are sensible uncertainties. Last week William F. Buckley, Jr. cautioned against precipitate jubilation, as "To Iraqis the very idea of an election was novel." Perhaps in January, to elect a National Assembly differing greatly from the governments previously assembled; and again in October to ratify the constituent body's production. Novel for the third time, after a year of the Iraqi press complaining of Baghdad's incompetence and venality? Overlooked is the courage required of a voter over there to simply walk to his precinct — surely this is not ephemeral. Detractors and skeptics of the new Iraq and its Western benefactors impute tyranny and strife to collective efforts of an entire populace, that when problems arise "Iraqis" are to blame. If that charge were condign, balloting in Fallujah, Ramadi and other places along the Western Euphrates would not have taken place. Liberty's foe has always been a tiny minority reveling in duplicity, intimidation and violence. Even the probably terrorist-linked political groups in the December 15th election, abhorrent to Iraqi Sunnis like the liberal brothers Omar, Mohammed and Ali Fadhil, represent the interests of few.
And if armed supporters of one party draw beads on supporters of another? Then Iraq would have some street fights between partisans, and combatants would be rounded up by federal authorities to public applause. Contrary to the perception delivered by leftist media, bloodletting is not a national pastime. God forbid, would we see another Abdul Karim Qassem, a coup? No, for three reasons. First, whereas the British in 1921 took a hindquarter from the Ottoman Empire and sat down a king, Americans established a native representative government. Corollary to that, there is in Iraq an egalitarian volunteer army and transcendent patriotism where once there was not. Third, notwithstanding those strengths, the American military is still in town.
Iyad Allawi's statement offers some explanation for the odd counts. Voting preference isn't geographically proportional. Count Chicago last, and Illinois will look as if its twenty-one electors will be Republican. Numbers have changed, most of them in favor of the United Iraqi Alliance's opponents. Some Iraqis won't be happy with the elected parliament, but losers never are; that is the price paid to play a fair game. Besides which, minority coalitions will have four years to bargain, wheedle and campaign. They can follow the example set in the oldest democracy in the world, where the opposition party now regularly consoles itself over losses with yarns of conspiracy and treachery, and has managed a fair job harassing the president and his party's congressional majorities.
Good can come of this. Who is a statesman, who a demagogue? One legitimate concern is over the sincerity of a few parties; Baghdad may respond to an exigency by finally disarming a few political militias. Iraqis will sort it out. They have endured terrorist gangsterism, contumely from leaders of some of the nations they wish to join and the doubt concomitant to reconstruction. The country they have helped build is hardly endangered by a kerfuffle.