There's a lot of truth in this......a lot of truth. On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 7:14 PM, Gruss Gott <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I have no inside information on the latest election, but I was on > the ground for the 2005 rounds of elections in Fallujah, and can shed > some light and historical perspective on what happened. As your > sources noted, the Sunnis of Anbar province boycotted the first round > of elections in January, 2005. Out of a city with an approximate > population of 180,000, Fallujah saw 8,000 turn out to vote. What was > never revealed, maybe until now, is that those numbers were > significantly padded by the 4,300 Iraqi Army soldiers stationed in > Fallujah. And these soldiers were nearly all Shi'a from Baghdad or > Basra. So, in the end, less than 4,000 Fallujans actually voted in > that first election. > > The job of that first assembly, as you may recall, was to draft a > constitution, like our Constitutional Convention of 1787. The Sunnis > of Al Anbar, and especially Fallujah, realized quickly that their > boycott had only resulted in ceding all the power to the Shi'a and the > Kurds. So they decided to participate in the next round of elections. > First came the constitutional referendum, which saw more than 100,000 > Fallujans vote (nearly unanimously against it) in October of 2005. > Then, in December, even more Fallujans, 130,000+ by the Iraqi Election > Commission's reckoning, voted in the Iraqi National Assembly > elections. > > Setting the conditions to allow this election was the major > objective of my unit at the time, and we all did everything we could > to encourage the large turnout. But it seemed to me then, and still > does, that this early emphasis on elections was certain to backfire. > Our political leaders were selling elections as if they were a magical > cure for all the problems of Iraq, that, simply by voting, Iraq would > become like all the other democracies in the world. And this clearly > was not the case. > > Elections in the absence of stability might have even made things > worse, offering false hope to the soon-to-be disillusioned Sunnis of > Al Anbar. The riots and uptick in violence in Anbar province that > occurred when the election results were announced (in early 2006) > would seem to confirm this view. > > Before the election I talked with a lot of Fallujans about what > the election would mean to them and what they expected from it. To a > man they were convinced that Sunnis were the majority population in > Iraq and once they all voted, Sunnis would take their rightful place > at the head of government. It was impossible to counter this idea. > If I suggested that generally accepted figures by the U.N. placed > Sunni Arabs at about 20% of all Iraqis they would dismiss it out of > hand. Who gave you those figures? The Shi'a? Iran? I remember the > old men saying, "How can this be? Look around you, everyone here is > Sunni. Everyone I know is Sunni. You Americans are so naïve to believe > everything the Shi'a tell you." > > During these conversations, I recalled our training on Iraqi > culture prior to our deployment. A professor from Georgetown > University had warned us (mostly college educated officers) how > different it would be to interact with illiterate people. Most people > in Al Anbar could not read, she said, and therefore they had only > their limited personal experience, and the words of their elders, to > provide context to their reality. For a literate person, it is > virtually impossible to comprehend how an illiterate person processes > information. How true this observation turned out to be. The idea > that our civilian leadership thought liberal democracy would spring up > naturally in this environment still seems incomprehensibly foolish to > me. > > I think the folly of introducing "democracy" with the hasty > election scheme was disastrous and foreseeable. Any serious student > of geopolitics knows that the rule of law is the fundamental precursor > to a functioning democracy - institutions, culture, accepted norms... > need to be shaped and accepted thoroughly over generations. Our own > democracy did not drop out of the sky in 1776, it was a product of > centuries of British history. As the already sixty year rise of South > Korea, Japan, Singapore, etc. reveal, the transition from rule of law > to democracy occurs in different ways in different cultures, and > typically takes several decades, not months. > > As the recent election reveals, Iraq might very well be on that > path of transition at last, but I hope our leaders finally understand > that it will happen in Iraqi fashion, and will likely be a > decades-long process. So hopefully we will ask ourselves whether we > want to take the ride with them, or if we have found a good spot to > get off. > > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:287468 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.5
