Iraqi Elections

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

As the insurgents continue their push to force Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to cancel or delay the scheduled January 30 elections, Allawi today admitted that Iraqis may be unable to vote in some places because of the security situation.  In an effort to exacerbate an already bad security situation, today insurgents killed six Iraqi police in a car bomb blast in Tikrit and also hit a U.S. military convoy south of Baghdad with a roadside bomb.

Iraqi elections should be neither cancelled nor delayed because cancelling the elections hands a major victory to the terrorists without improving the security situation of the Iraqi people.  (Rolling elections, with various regions in Iraq voting in turn while security forces are shuffled around to protect the voters, are one acceptable option, as they would not hand the terrorists a major victory.)  But it's important to understand the dangers inherent to the situation that Allawi foresees, in which the threat of violence has the potential to disenfranchise large segments of the population.  If Sunni Muslims lose faith in the new Iraqi government because they're underrepresented in the National Assembly, the consequences for Iraq could be enormous.

My column at Front Page Magazine today addresses this issue.  In it, I argue that the next month is crucial for both Bush and Allawi to address their populations to address the future of Iraq -- Bush in his State of the Union Address and Allawi after the National Assembly elections.  Here's my take on what Allawi needs to say to the Iraqi people:  "Prime Minister Allawi must deliver a major address to the Iraqi people that emphasizes their unity in the face of an enemy that promises them nothing but chaos and tyranny.  In particular, he has to assuage minority groups' fears that their voices will be silenced and their interests subjugated as the new Iraqi constitution is drafted.  He must emphasize that the National Assembly will consult extensively with acknowledged leaders from the Sunni and Kurdish communities, and that it is the Assembly's unshakable intent to produce a constitution that does not favor Shiite over Sunni or Sunni over Kurd, but rather one that grants all Iraqis equality under the law."

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