Options for Iraq, and for US
WHEN IRAQIS vote for new provincial councils today, they will be making fateful decisions about their country. The key issues in today's balloting are centered on Iraqis' self-definition rather than America's role in Iraq. For that very reason, the election may help prepare the way for the military withdrawal promised by President Obama.
The pre-election campaign featured two sets of arguments: between those who want a state defined by religion and those who want to move in the direction of secularism; and between advocates of a strong central government in Baghdad and federalists insisting on autonomy for Iraq's separate regions. These are quarrels that Iraqis will have to settle among themselves.
When it comes to these questions, the United States has no business trying to impose its own preferences on the Iraqis. So the reticence of the new Obama administration on these matters is a positive sign.
The Bush administration too often treated Iraq as if it were a test tube for capricious experiments in remaking the Middle East. Those experiments backfired disastrously. The results include over 4 million displaced people; ghastly sectarian warfare; hundreds of thousands of lives lost; and shortages of electricity, clean water, adequate healthcare, and schools for Iraqi children. The time is long past to teach Iraqis lessons about how to repair their shattered society.
The US needs to exercise restraint in responding to whatever political choices Iraqis may make today or in the parliamentary vote scheduled for December. Those elections - and the crucial coalitions that will be formed afterward - may produce a polity that is more or less inclined to strong central government, more or less Islamic. Whatever the outcome, and whatever the preferences of US policy makers, there should be no public carping or criticism from Washington.
The Obama administration will best serve both American and Iraqi interests if it proceeds with the orderly withdrawal of combat forces. The campaigning for today's election showed a pronounced turn toward Iraqi nationalist themes. Although that inevitably leads to expressions of impatience with the foreign occupier, and may even recall some of the rhetorical motifs of Saddam Hussein's regime, it is not necessarily a bad thing.
At best, the Iraqi elections will produce leaders who seek to insulate Iraq from the influence of overbearing neighbors, include previously excluded Sunni Arab political forces, and resolve Kurdish-Arab conflicts. That will go a long way toward creating the stability needed to facilitate the complete withdrawal of US combat troops President Obama promised. 