Despite mortars raining down nearby, voters in the capital still came to the polls. In the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah in northern Baghdad, Walid Abid, a 40-year-old father of two, was speaking as mortars landed several hundreds yards (meters) away. Police reported at least 20 mortar attacks in the neighborhood shortly after daybreak and mortars were also launched toward the Green Zone — home to the U.S. Embassy and the prime minister's office.
"I am not scared and I am not going to stay put at home," Abid said. "Until when? We need to change things. If I stay home and not come to vote, Azamiyah will get worse."
Many view the election as a crossroads where Iraq will decide whether to adhere to politics along the Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish lines or move away from the ethnic and sectarian tensions that have emerged since the fall of Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted, Sunni minority rule.
The violence has created individual and family tragedies without having a strategic impact. So mourning will be for the human losses. Our enemies are sick and surely enjoy that aspect, but their purpose was to disrupt the election, and in that they've failed.
I'm not all that worried about making Iraqis moving away from ethnic and sectarian lines as a result of voting. I just want Iraqis to accept using ballots instead of bullets as they compete even across those lines. More important than even elections, I want enough Iraqis to reject corruption and embrace (or at least accept) rule of law to break with the past.
If Iraqis see politics and lawyers as the way to resolve differences and not death squads and IEDs, we will have achieved another great success. This success could be the greatest after the successes of destroying Saddam's Baathist regime and making sure he never got nukes; creating a pro-Western Iraq; and defeating al Qaeda, Baathist, Sunni nationalist, and pro-Iranian Sadrist insurgents and terrorists after the fall of Saddam.
We simply do not have to compel all Iraqis to love each other and sing Kumbaya. I don't know how the meme that they all have to hold hands and smile got started. Given the history of the country--and I'm talking centuries and not just the last seven years of terrorism or even the last forty brutal years under the Baathists--it is too much to ask of simple elections.
If one day purple fingers spread throughout the Moslem Middle East, that will be the greatest success of all. Even if Vice President Biden embraces that outcome, much of the credit will lie with George the Liberator.
UPDATE: President Obama rightly congratulated the Iraqis:
"I have great respect for the millions of Iraqis who refused to be deterred by acts of violence, and who exercised their right to vote today," Obama said in a statement. "Their participation demonstrates that the Iraqi people have chosen to shape their future through the political process. "
Another step in the process of accumulating more wins.
