Lines In The Sand: The Iraq Election

Imagine voting in an election for one of more than a hundred lists, representing more than seven thousand candidates, where nearly all of the candidates are unknown, where the parties and coalitions have no clear platforms, policies or positions, and there is no public campaign. Now imagine that this election is under military occupation and Marshall law and if you choose to vote, you will risk not only your life but the lives of your family members as well.

Would you vote for what amounts to a flip of the coin, a toss of the dice, a chance that your vote will be interpreted as a vote for democracy?

People have cast their votes in the Iraqi election (and they deserve our admiration) but neither they nor the world can have any notion what that means. We can assume that the Kurds have voted for autonomy, the Shiites for majority control, and the Sunnis for political survival. We might assume that those who deliberately chose not to participate were either voting for security or against the occupation or both. In truth, we can have no more confidence in our assumptions than the Iraqis can that their votes will affect what they intended.

If I were a voter in the Iraq election, I would have only one question for the parties and candidates vying for my ballot: Where do you stand on the occupation? If this is in fact a free election, there is no question of greater importance to the future of Iraq than this, yet we hear nothing of parties demanding an end to the occupation. We cannot but wonder if opposition to the occupation was disallowed by the occupying forces. If this is the case, then we can come to no other conclusion than that the election is a fraud, that we have drawn yet another line in the sand, that we have staged yet another photo op for the benefit of American politicians and American media, at the cost of Iraqi lives.

Patience, we are counseled, it must get worse before it gets better. When we topple the regime, it will get better. When we capture Saddam, it will get better. When we hand over sovereignty, it will get better. When we have elections, it will get better.

When will we realize that the desert is a dry ocean of endless waves? There are no lines in the sand that are not perpetually redrawn. There is no beginning and there is no end. The desert itself resists occupation.

Why do we continue to insist that the insurgents are fighting democracy and freedom when it is amply clear to all that they are fighting an occupation?

We have crossed yet another line in the sand and our leaders ask us to imagine a milestone when in fact it is just another line, another notch on the calendar, another magical media moment, yet nothing has changed. As our president has said, we should expect more attacks before and after. Nothing has changed.

We have had an election in Iraq, a very peculiar election where the names of the candidates were suppressed until the final hour, yet we have had an election and in that there is hope. Not knowing how the official slates were assembled, whether the process was open or vetted for occupation interests, the hope is that it is a crapshoot. For if the electoral process is governed by chance, the result will be a representative sample of the electorate. If the law of randomization is allowed expression, the resulting government will surely demand an end to the occupation.

In a shocking concession to the New York Times, our president recently promised to pull our troops out if the new government so requests. Did he mean it? My guess is that this is what happens when they take the muzzle off. It is the reason he so rarely spoke to the press before the election. My guess is that they are scrambling in the bowels of the White House right now to explain why the president did not mean what he said.

No matter. The president said what he said. Our job is to insist that he keep his word. If the Iraqi people, against all odds, can find a way to express their will through an elected government, and our president, against all reason, keeps his word, the election in Iraq will mark the end of the occupation.

Democracy is a grand and noble experiment. It can neither be contained nor fully controlled. Left uncorrupted, it is often unpredictable. As our president has suggested, it is the natural enemy of all tyrants.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS).