Iraq Elections: A Small Step, Not a Giant Leap

After a year of worry, heightened by the drama of the de-Ba'athification candidate purge, the Iraqi elections went off without many hitches.  Which is to say that there were plenty of bombings, 38 people were killed, but two-thirds of the country voted including a majority of the Sunni population that boycotted the last election in 2005.  That's good news for the Iraqis and it's better news for us, because it means that we are on pace to leave on schedule by the end of 2011.  What the election does not do, however, is retroactively vindicate the decision to invade Iraq.  

If in a few decades Iraq has blossomed into a robust Western style democracy, with the individual freedoms, prosperity and assumed security that are the rewards guaranteed by accountable government, then perhaps historians will wonder if it was worth the brutal cost imposed on the country.  However, to argue that the invasion, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, displaced millions more and still pays a dividend of 300 Iraqi political murders a month, is justified because of one election is lunacy.  Democracy is arguably an important end in and of itself, but representation is inarguably not the paramount virtue of governance; Plato, after all, chose philosopher kings as his ideal form of government.  Democracy is good primarily because it means the state is reponsive to the needs of the people, which means it will increase their standard of living instead of just focusing on making really big presidential palaces or cool statues.  

So far however, Iraqi Democracy has not brought any improvements to the quality of life for the average Iraqi.  Iraqis have virtually no infrastructure (only 25% of the country has enough electricity or access to health care), rank 156th in per capita GDP (underneath the Congo, Bhutan and Bolivia), spend 20% of public funds on security and still suffer from daily bombings and murders.  One can only hope that representative democracy will find leaders to improve this situation, but many countries in similar situations see elected leaders consolidate power into dictatorships in all but name.  Daniel Larison:

one of the last things fledgling democracies in countries with a history of authoritarianism need is a massively oversized military and security apparatus. It is often the case in developing countries that the military can serve as an institution that unites and integrates the nation. This will tend to make it the one institution most of the population trusts and respects. However, with greater prestige and respect comes a willingness to intervene in politics when the elected civilians prove themselves to be incapable of governing effectively and/or relatively honestly. When experiments in liberalism, democratization and privatization go awry or are associated with extremely negative economic conditions, public confidence in these things disappears. If democratization is followed by dysfunction, corruption, misrule and lack of basic services, military or authoritarian government becomes very attractive. Given the extent of the sectarian politicization of Iraq’s military and police that already exists, and considering the harsh and arbitrary practices of security forces right now, the differences between an authoritarian and a democratic Iraq are not nearly as great as they are supposed to be.

Time quoted U.S. Ambassador to Baghdad Christopher Hill stating that "the real test of a democracy is not so much the behavior of the winners; it will be the behavior of the losers."  Given the dual threats of an renewed Sunni insurgency from one side or a robustly militarized Iraq slipping backing into dictatorship from the other, it's isn't hard to see few guarantees this election really offers.

The U.S. caused this calamity and its nonexistant rewards for that "service" should remembered the next time we gear up to invade a country.  In the meantime, we will have to rebalance our budget strained from spending billions a week, console the families of 4,000 dead soldiers and support the families of thousands more injured in service of a war of choice against a country that posed absolutely no threat to the United States.  It bears repeating that no country poses a threat to the United States in the short term, because the U.S. has a superabundance of power both institutionally, economically and militarily.  Over-reacting to immediate nuisances by conflating them with real dangers only quickens the day when our standing can no longer be taken for granted.

We should leave Iraq, because they don't want us there now, anymore than they wanted us to invade in the first place.  Iraq for the Iraqis and rebuke for anyone who tries to squint until they see the silver lining in this cloud.