The Tribune’s line of argument was so conventionally in sync with what most of the pro-war pundits and the administration have been saying that it seemed a good representative example of the kind of ‘thinking’, if we’ll call it that, at work behind the die-hard belief that elections represent the antithesis or solution to political violence. It is basically triumphalist rhetoric–the kind each side would blare at each other in Stalingrad–but without even the intent of demoralising the other side’s forces. I have to think that it serves the purpose of convincing our own public and the writers’ convincing themselves that the cause they have supported is not complete nonsense.

If the insurgency has any breadth, as it seems to have in the Sunni areas, as we are conventionally reduced to describing them, its very existence precludes successful elections (and not only because of the insecurity), as this insurgency represents those constituencies that would not accept any electoral outcome. Before elections can take place in any country, such people must either all be killed and imprisoned (highly unlikely and, concerning the strictly civilian population, profoundly immoral) or accommodated, and a simple, one-man, one-vote system cannot possibly accommodate the interests and real fears (of a hostile Shi’i majority) of these people.

I am reminded more and more of the struggle between the British and the bittereinders in South Africa that continued for two years after the official surrender of the Afrikaner free states. It was during this guerrilla war that most of the deaths of the Boer War occurred (a war, incidentally, greeted with even greater trash journalism, popular jingoism and anti-European hysteria, if that is imaginable, than here during the preparation for invading Iraq). The British turned to increasing brutality (and how long will it be before we begin imprisoning the women and children en masse as they did to the Boers to break the resistance?), which managed to get a great many people killed and did eventually removed military resistance as a reasonable option for the bittereinders. However, the only reason why these Afrikaners acquiesced to British rule was the favourable political position they were given. The Sunnis are guaranteed losers, no matter the outcome of any election, so they have a better chance extracting concessions by the gun.

The idea that the democratic system is inherently morally superior, even though it is premised on the same threat and use of force to wield power (which someone decides is legitimate because the mob says so), forgets our own experience with a much less stark choice: our fathers could continue to exist within the legal framework of Britain’s dominions as subjects of the monarchy and endure the niggling interferences imposed by London, or our fathers could choose violent resistance against what they regarded as insufferable encroachments on their privileges and positions.

This is not to make our Founders morally equivalent with the ugly types who are setting off bombs in Iraq, but to suggest that those who choose political violence do so on the assumption that their legitimate claims will go unaddressed under a status quo or a proposed future constitution. Take the Tamils, for instance. They were a distinct minority, many descendants of immigrants from south India from colonial times, but lived in an ostensibly democratic government–indeed, it was the democratic character of politics, especially after 1956, that solidified Sinhalese political dominance and Tamil exclusion, further magnified by the centralisation of power in the ’70s that further disempowered the Tamils. It is not entirely as straightforward as that, but the basic point is that the existence of a democratic electoral system does not guarantee that minority interests are really protected, even when there are some constitutional guarantees to that effect. If the minority cannot basically identify with other groups in the country on some common basis, it has little or no reason to accept the regime that empowers those other groups. If the regime cannot give those people a reason to collaborate, violent extremists will become the natural outlet for the frustrations of that group.

If one of the duties of a government is to provide for peace in its own country the pursuit of this kind of democratic government (under a constitution in which the Kurds have special regional privileges, but no one else does) is directly contrary to the fulfillment of that duty. Even if most Sunnis wanted the insurgency to end (and I don’t know this to be true), the irreconcilables are apparently numerous and violent enough to make sure that it becomes the main representative of their interests.

There is an interesting article on Iraqi elections on Antiwar. Here is the link:

http://www.laweekly.com/ink/05/07/dissonance-cooper.php