The press reports all violence in Iraq as taking place "before the elections." How long has it been going on now? A couple weeks? By framing every bombing this way, one might think the press and their real world allies think it is a mistake to hold elections at the end of the month:
U.S. and Iraqi officials had predicted an escalation in violence as the elections approach, with Sunni insurgents seeking to frighten people into staying away from the polls. Sunni clerics have also called for a boycott because of the presence of U.S. and other foreign forces on Iraqi soil.
Although the majority Shiite Muslims and the Kurds are expected to vote in large numbers, officials fear a low turnout among Sunni Arabs may cast doubt on the legitimacy of the new government and sharpen communal tensions among the country's 26 million people.
So there you go, the 80% of the population that is Kurdish or Shia will vote in large numbers. The minority 20% Sunnis, in whose name the insurgents are bombing and killing to frighten people away from the elections, might have a low turnout. Fancy that. I want to know what officials fear that this situation will cast doubt on the legitimacy of the vote.
Indeed, the desire in the press to see the elections is clear in many of the stories I've read or heard. Real Clear Politics highlights this piece which speaks of the "bearded intellectual" who wants the elections postponed:
"Unfortunately, the Bush administration has made Jan. 30 a sacred date," Attiyah told the group. He spoke of his efforts to reach out to the Sunni-led insurgency, and to woo insurgents who weren't radical Islamists or diehard Saddam remnants. This, he said, needed more time.
The whole piece was sympathic to the need for "outreach" to the Sunni insurgents. The author concluded:
It is too late now to postpone the Jan. 30 elections. The open question is whether it will still be possible for Iraqis to reconcile with one another after a ballot that divides them along religious and ethnic lines.
The disappointment that the elections will go forward is just bizarre. Just what do all those who want to postpone the election "to calm things down" expect will happen in the next 6 months to calm things down? Unless these delay advocates expect lions to lie down with lambs, what will persuade the Sunnis to stop supporting the Baathist thugs and their jihadi allies? The only reasonable way to smash up the Baathists would be to intensify the military campaign and do some serious killing. Are the give peace a chance folks going all bloody-minded on us?
Really though, for a group of people who dislike military options so much, their desire for another six months of fighting to suppress the insurgents is baffling. Insurgencies are about sucking the oxygen away from insurgents and that requires better political alternatives to the insurgents. Military campaigns can only buy time for the political battle to be won. This is why I have never focused on kill ratios (except in a narrow focus to judge how well we fight). No matter how effective we are in killing the enemy, if the political battle isn't drying up recruitment, replacements will be constantly pumped into the fight against us. Those who want to postpone the election seem to think counter-insurgency is a military problem.
This I find fascinating. It is bad enough that the Left refuses to support military actions when it is necessary to defend our interests. It was bad enough when they supported humanitarian wars with little in the way of vital interests present. Must they now support military options when they are actually counter-productive? The military is buying time. That is all. Our forces cannot pound the enemy into submission unless we are ready to commit mass murder the way Saddam put down the Shias in 1991. Our values rightly preclude that method so we must make supporting the insurgency unappealing to Sunnis.
Or perhaps I'm over analyzing. Maybe those who want to postpone the elections just can't stand to see America make progress in creating a new, free Iraq. Maybe this is really what they want to postpone.
Press forward with the elections. They will be legitimate. And keep building the governmental and security institutions that will allow the Iraqis to fight the insurgents.
John Keegan (via Real Clear Politics) speaks well of the upcoming elections even as he notes that the insurgency has posed a challenge to our vision of elections to replace Saddam's thug rule:
Neo-Islamists are a minority, even in the most pious Muslim countries, and few Muslims, however devout, wish to die as suicide fighters. A majority of Muslims everywhere are familiar with what Western civilisation offers and are eager to enjoy its rewards.
That explains in part the extensive opposition to the holding of the impending elections in Iraq. Successful elections and the establishment of a government bring a mandate that shakes the claims of even the most committed Islamists to enjoy the right to oppose its authority.
Such a government, properly supported by Western troops and money increasingly to be supplied by Iraq's growing oil revenues, would hearten Iraq's home-grown security forces, at present under attack from Islamist terrorists.
It would also dishearten the pragmatic opponents of democracy, of whom there are many, who, while assuming Islamic clothing, really fear that democracy will expose them for what they are: unreformed supporters of the old regime, in which a Sunni minority exercised power over the Shia majority.
Let us hope that the American believers in elections as the best cure for political trouble are proved right in Iraq, as they have usually been elsewhere.
