Sistani, who insisted upon elections occurring in this form (confident, we can reasonably guess, of a Shia landslide) got what he wanted and will work tirelessly to build upon whatever political foundation has been laid.
The American corporate media, eager for simple stories "celebrating the human spirit" (and providing "positive news" for Washington's pleasure) was given a huge opportunity to do what it does best: eliminate complexity in its presentation of events.
Washington, which opposed these elections for quite some time (remember how, in the original plan, al Chalabi was supposed to be installed as strongman with Bremer as a sort of viceroy for who knows how long?) was given a chance to talk about "milestones" and "steps along the way to democracy" and other photo op/sound bite ready utterances.
The American public - or at least a sizable percentage of it - happy to accept whatever is offered as the reason of the day for invasion (one moment, nuclear missiles headed from Baghdad to Manhattan and London - the next, "spreading liberty around the globe") will cling to this as proof positive American foreign policy is on the side of the angels.
The Iraqi voters themselves, whose motives are multitude - from nuanced and cynical to wide eyed and hopeful that now, at long last, power will be reliably restored, violence will lessen or be eliminated and things will generally return to normal - receive a dash of hope.
Now hope is one of those words that, when you hear it, immediately seems like an unalloyed good thing. We need hope to press on when the situation is grim. But if various informed opinions are even half correct we can be certain that the majority of voters were hoping for a rise of the Shia to power. And this has interesting implications.
Americans, newly obsessed with "radical Islam" (or, as the fashionably excitable shout - 'Islamo-fascism') are concerned about whether this Shia dominated government will be secular or religious.
This is the wrong concern.
More pertinent is what this new power, regardless of its attitude towards the mixture of mosque and state, will ask of the Americans who've established approximately 14 permanent and semi-permanent bases around Iraq.
The United States did not invade Iraq to leave it to its own devices - sweet words to the contrary notwithstanding. At some point (next week?
five years from now? who can say?) the Iraqi majority who've, to-date, refrained from armed rebellion, will demand that their leaders remove this foreign irritant.
When this happens, the real game will be afoot.
These elections are indeed the beginning of something. Just not what the boosters say.
.d.
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