Harry’s gang crow over election ‘success’

I notice that david t over at Harry’s Place has been crowing over the “success” of the recent election in Iraq. He quotes the five main anti-war groups who have yet to make any statement on these elections.

Not that anyone should wish for the elections to be disrupted by terrorist action, or for the people to be subjected to any more oppression or destruction than they’ve already suffered. But the reason we opposed the war in the first place isn’t because we didn’t like the idea of democracy or freedom in Iraq, but because we didn’t trust the Americans’ motives, or believe that the invasion would necessarily be quick.

The Sunnis have boycotted it, which may well be because they’re not happy with the “two wolves and a sheep” style of democracy that’s on offer. You don’t want to see Iraq turn into Iran, and neither do they (although I don’t think Sistani does either; his teacher was against the Khomeini model of an Islamic state). Large areas of the country were too unsafe to vote even if they weren’t boycotting (so where’s the success, david?).

But apart from all of this, the real issue is what happens after these elections are over. Will, for example, the elections be re-run in the areas where people couldn’t vote? Will democracy persist even after the Americans and British go home? Will Allawi get overthrown in a coup or find some way to push aside the Parliament? Of course, nobody wants to see the current government turn into yet another corrupt Arab dictatorship (if it isn’t one already), but I still think it’s a bit premature for the pro-war set to start saying “we got it right and you got it wrong, na na nuh na na …”