Monday, January 31, 2005
Iraq election redux
Amir Taheri, an Iranian writer and commentator has an article in today's Times of London in which he praises the "brave voters of Iraq" who "defied the terrorists and proved the doom-sayers wrong". He should have appended "in America and throughout the world" to that sentence. It is truly astonishing and more than worth a nod of respect to the millions of Iraqis - the approximately 70% of them! - who risked a lot more than half an hour's time, as we generally do - to vote. Their ballot was extraordinarily complex and the danger potentially fatal, but they did it anyway. Taheri closes his piece by pointing out that now, after the last half century of brutality (at worst) and doctrinaire totalitarianism (at best (if that can be ever said to be 'at best')), "battles will be fought inside the debating chambers of the assembly, on the campaign stump for a constitutional referendum, and then a new parliament to be elected before the end of this year." The doom-sayers were wrong, the optimists (and the auptimist) were right: "[t]he ballot box won’t lead to the coffin; it is the cradle of a new Iraq."
Labels: politics
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