1115.org

With only about a month to go until the Iraq elections, Osama Bin Laden has finally weighed in with a new audio message aimed toward possible voters. And, as you can imagine, he’s not a big fan of the electoral process:

TERROR chief Osama Bin Laden has made a blatant bid to destroy Iraq’s elections.

In a chilling audiotape broadcast yesterday, the al-Qaeda leader urged all Iraqi Muslims to boycott the poll on January 30.

Yes, the above quote (from the UK’s Sun newspaper) is a bit breathless, but considering that Bin Laden went on to say that all Iraqi voters would be considered infidels, the drama seems appropriate. Unfortunately, while Bin Laden gets the headlines, the election situation in Iraq seems to be coming apart without any of his help.

Consider:

- Citing security concerns, the largest Sunni political party has decided to pull out of the elections, joining other Sunni groups who have decided to boycott the process altogether. The result is that a key Iraqi ethnic faction (20% of Iraqis are Sunni) will have little to no representation in the elections and subsequent Iraqi government. To balance the scales a little bit, the US government has floated the idea of giving government posts to Sunnis regardless of the actual election results, a suggestion that has obviously not been greeted with praise by the Shi’ite majority.

- Fanning the flames of partisan violence even further, a suicide bomber targeted the head of Iraq’s largest Shi’ite political party, killing 15 people and adding to a violent situation that, if America didn’t have a stake in it, we would be describing as a civil war.

These two developments, when added to the huge list of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and other assorted mayhem that has been going on in Iraq on a daily basis, shows a picture of a country that is pulling itself apart. Does anyone seriously think that the upcoming election is going to fix the deep divides between Iraq’s own people, to say nothing of their attitudes toward us? With such a large number of people boycotting the process, and areas of the country that are overrun with violence, how can such an election be considered as legitimate?

There are no easy answers to these concerns. But one thing seems certain: if the United States had come up with a better (or, as the cynics would say, any) plan to stabilize Iraq after the initial invasion was concluded, we would have been better prepared to deal with Iraqi security and the unique demands of an upcoming election. Instead, it seems like we want Democracy to take root simply by talking about it, thinking that “freedom” will automatically trump centuries of ethnic hatred and decades of oppression.

While hardly an impartial observer in all of this, Sunni politician Tarek al-Hashemi makes a lot of sense with the following quote:

“We believe when a house is on fire, you should first put out the fire before working on decorating and arranging it.”

What a mess. And unfortunately, unless we leave the various Iraqi groups to slug it out on their own, this is our mess.