The Iraqi election

The fall of Baghdad didn't do it. Killing saddam's sons didn't do it. The capture of saddam hussein didn't do it. The hand over of "authority" to an "interim Iraqi government" didn't do it. Maybe the election of a 275 member National Assembly, to select a president and committee to then draft a constitution will see us finally "turn the corner" on Operation Iraqi Freedom, bringing "stability", "democracy" and "liberty" to "the region".

The election we heard so much about during, prior to, and since the presidential campaign is finally here. It's funny how many people thought (and still think) it is an election to directly select a president in Iraq. Details weren't that important during the last presidential campaign. This Sunday brave Iraqi citizens, some outside the country, will go to the cardboard voting booth and select 275 leaders out of a field of 7,471 candidates from 111 different parties. One candidate is the former friend of the neo-cons, ahmed chalabi. Will the man who helped CONvince the administration and their closest friends of saddam's weapons of mass destruction, as well as saddam's connection to al qaeda for $300,000 a month be part of the government we've spent so much blood and treasure building?

Eight candidates have been murdered, polling places have been bombed, and foes of this election(and anything else the United States is a part of in Iraq) have threatened more intense violence leading up to and on election day. The intimidation involved in this election makes what happened in the Ukraine look like a Board of Education election. The world's standards on legitimacy for this election will have to be minimized, if not waived all together. The fact that there are no neutral foreign observers monitoring the vote is, in itself, proof of this.

One can only hope that somehow a civil war doesn't break out, and our troops can be brought home the way the Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Portugal, and Denmark are planning to.

There was a great speech given at the Johns' Hopkins School of International Studies by Senator Edward Kennedy on America's future in Iraq. In it he describes how "We need a serious course correction, and we need it now." He also addresses the possibilty that "We have reached the point that a prolonged American military presence in Iraq is no longer productive for either Iraq or the United States. The U.S. military presence has become part of the problem, not part of the solution."