December 17, 2005
Can It Be? Democracy Working?
By William
F. Buckley
The national elections in Iraq are putatively good news. What happened
that was of great importance was the decision by the Sunni insurgents
to permit people to vote without threatening death and mayhem. That
license increased the participation rate from a little more than
50 percent of eligible voters last January to about 70 percent on
Thursday.
We will not
have long to wait before seeing whether the insurgents' decision
was an acknowledgment of political reality, or only a temporary
maneuver calculated to reinforce their strength in showdowns to
come. If a few weeks go by and there is a marked decrease in insurgent
activity, then the events of Dec. 15 will reasonably be viewed
as a true turning point in this protracted struggle.
It is wise
to remember that democratic exercises are pointless except as
they commit the participants to accepting the consequences of
losing. If a political movement takes part in an election only
in order to measure strength, intending no commitment to be instructed
by the election's results, we have only illusory adjudications
of power.
There is
insufficient evidence, as I write, of the strategic disposition
of the Sunnis, either the secularists or the Islamists. When the
insurgents gave out word that Iraqis were free to vote, was it
implicit that voting in this election -- held to choose 275 council
representatives -- frees them from prior obligations to ethnic
and tribal attachments?
In any case,
there will be dissenters, as there are in societies with a long
history of democracy, and the dissenters must be allowed to continue
to dissent. But in a society unused to democratic dispositions,
will the losers feel free to dissent from majority decisions at
gunpoint? And is there anything that can be done to vitiate the
perception that the resistance of the bitter-enders represents
fidelity to the supernatural?
This has
for a very long time been the critical point in our relations
with Islam. When 9/11 came, many observers argued that what was
most needed was a rejection of what happened as the doing of Islam.
An effort was made to transcribe the views of peaceful Muslim
leaders, and some rejections of terrorism were recorded. But they
were not decisive enough to carry the day.
There was,
just to begin with, the great silence of so many Muslims who refused
to condemn terrorism as contravening the teachings of Muhammad.
There was also the fear among U.S. representatives abroad that
spontaneous expressions of Muslim opinion would not assist our
purpose. If polls reveal that 30 percent or 40 percent of Muslims
in Chicago or in Birmingham applauded the attack on New York,
it is not easy to plead the irregularity of the minority's faith.
This does
not mean that the effort should be abandoned -- especially at
this point, when there is formal hope, arising out of the elections,
that democratic practices will take hold. Whoever the council
chooses as prime minister must make this point most emphatically:
that the Muslim faith is honored by rejecting theological presumption
that refuses to share power with people of different faiths.
We cannot
simply assume that because 10 million Iraqis voted, they were
indicating a willingness to subsume other concerns in the democratic
ideal. To Iraqis the very idea of an election was novel. If it
should all work out, Iraq will have nurtured democratic habits
by indulging a total dictator for 30 odd years, and then submitting
to an invasion by a western power.
Acceptance
of democratic rules can cause real changes of heart, and most
of the western diplomats and warriors involved in Iraq pray in
whatever theological idiom that this has in fact happened. They
will be keen to spot some evidence that the change of heart is
there. It would be informative to have word on that point from
Saddam Hussein, who has talked about everything else in the world
during his endless last days.
Copyright
2005 Universal Press Syndicate
