Don't count yer chickens just yet

When the Bush administration’s war in Iraq resulted in the country being overrun by American troops rather quickly, victory was celebrated prematurely when the President declared on board the USS Abraham Lincoln that major military operations had ended. The end of major military operations, or so it turned out, was not the end of the war, which continues to this day.
It would appear that the President might be making the same mistake now that the landmark elections have been held on the day scheduled, and with a minimum loss of lives, and a maximum of participation by the Iraqi electorate. Already the President has declared the process to be a success, and has lauded the Iraqi people’s commitment to democracy.
And yet this election was not held to seat a government, but to begin the process of forming a basis for a government. From the results of this election, a constitutional convention will write a document that must then be ratified by the people. Only then will a government be elected and seated.

And we do not yet know what sort of constitution or government will emerge from this process. Remember that the majority of the citizens of this country are Shiite, and that they have long been repressed by the minority Sunni Muslims. And remember that those members of the Shiite community who participated in the election were not reticent in declaring that their one ambition was to rid the country of outside (read American) troops. And remember that the most of these Shiites have long admired the Iranian Islamic Republic, which to this day still disdains anything American or democratic. So we are not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.

So what should the reaction of the coalition be if, as could very well be the case, a government emerges that does closely resemble the Islamic Republic in Iran? What if this government does not allow the institutions of democracy to even be formed, let alone flourish? Those Islamic countries whose rule has been based on the Shari’ah, or Muslim code of religious law, have not been exactly been known for their progressive viewpoints.

And what about the future President of Iraq? What if the radical cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia was involved in a revolt against the coalition forces, and who has only reluctantly joined the political process, is elected? Certainly the U. S. could not view this optimistically. In short, there are a lot of what-ifs to be addressed before anyone can ever think that the Iraqi election is anything like a success.

And why should we be thinking the worse at this point? Simply because the Bush administration seems to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. This is the same President who, when asked what he considered to have been his greatest mistakes during his first term, could find no fault in himself.

Now consider what we have spent in resources and lives, to have achieved what little has been achieved, in Iraq. In essence, the President has bet some 200 billion dollars, some 1500 plus (and counting) American lives, an unknown, but considerably larger number of Iraqi civilian lives, and both American and British prestige, that Iraq will become a democracy, a bet that by no means has been won yet.