Iraq election success

You did not have to be a supporter of George Bush's way of looking at the world to hope that the election in Iraq went well. And it did, and this is very good news. For as difficult as it will be to bear the insufferable (and unwarranted) smugness of neo-conservatives about the 60% turnout rate in Iraq's election, a figure at par with Canada's, the victory of democracy is an Iraqi one.

It certainly isn't a neo-conservative victory - Iraqis snatched a victory from the hell-bent efforts of the administration to screw up their "let's rebuild Iraq" Sim City game. A country that conquers and occupies another becomes responsible for that country's security and infrastructure. The Anglo-American coalition, mobilized with Rumsfeld's invasion-lite philosophy, was simply not large enough to ensure security and prevent an insurrection. As a result they have spent a year and a half alternating between ineffective and brutal in places like Fallujah as they attempted what they did not have enough soldiers to pull off. Iraq has been transformed into a place more violent than Gaza, where bombs and chaos are a daily affair. So I've got to be impressed that 60% of the eligible population turned out, risking life and limb, in order to cast a ballot. That is real courage - how many Canadians would go to the polls if they thought there was a real risk that Quebec separatists or Alberta commune dwellers would blow them up for doing so? We only get sixty percent now, when little other than weather is ever an impediment.

Whoever wins the election, the real winner today is hope. For the first time in a long time, there might be a light at the end of the tunnel (even if an Anglo-American exit strategy is a long way away.)