SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

As most reg­u­lar read­ers know, I’ve been extremely skep­ti­cal about American involve­ment in Iraq. The White House’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for going to war always seemed shaky to me; its exe­cu­tion, nearly as wob­bly.
But the sight of so many Iraqis risk­ing their lives to vote yes­ter­day, that was beyond inspi­ra­tional. And I have to give the President and his team credit here. They had the col­lec­tive stones to stick with these elec­tions — even when seizures of vio­lence made the plan look like fan­tasy. And they had fore­sight to pre­dict the elec­tri­fy­ing power of the bal­lot in Iraq — no mat­ter how con­fused, how rushed, or how scary the elec­tion may have been.
In Iraqis, the White House saw a group who couldn’t wait to grab con­trol of their lives, after so many years with­out lever­age at all. The President’s peo­ple were right. And, as a result, some­thing beau­ti­ful hap­pened on Sunday.
Here’s how one friend, who’s been help­ing the Iraqis set up these elec­tions, described yesterday’s events:

Today was a day for vot­ers and elec­toral work­ers, and both groups exceeded expec­ta­tions. Throughout the day, we worked the phones to get updates from friends and asso­ciates across Iraq. The phras­ing of one seemed to have been echoed by many: we heard explo­sions and gun­fire, but we were together and were not afraid. A quin­tes­sen­tial exam­ple of what hap­pened here today is relayed in an anec­dote from Quadisiyah, a dis­trict of Baghdad at the end of the penin­sula. Voters lined up out­side a polling sta­tion and then scat­tered when an insur­gent appeared down the street with an RPG and fired. The grenade missed its tar­get, and an hour later the vot­ers regrouped, in greater num­bers, to fin­ish the job.
Nearly forty died across Iraq today in the vio­lence that had been promised. Nine sui­cide bombers also vis­ited polling sta­tions. Insurgents chased down vot­ers exit­ing polling sta­tions and hit them with grenades. And there were mor­tars. They waited an hour or so until after the polling sta­tions opened here before hit­ting in force. And then there was silence, and in that silence, a peo­ple beset by hard­ship went about the busi­ness of self-​​expression. The honor of the fallen was upheld by the unde­terred.
A cou­ple weeks ago, a bright young friend of mine asked me who is this Ben Franklin guy? I asked what made him won­der and he said, still star­ing at his inter­net screen, because he said that peo­ple who think there is a choice between secu­rity and lib­erty deserve nei­therI think thats pretty cool, would there be any prob­lem with my print­ing this out and hang­ing it on the wall? No prob­lem at all, Mohammed, print away.

January 31st, 2005 | War Update | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.