Iraqi Democracy?

February 07, 2005

The unjustified euphoria over the Iraq elections still has not worn off. That will happen, no doubt, when the final results are tabulated, showing how few Iraqis actually voted. (In Mosul, a city of two million, only 10 percent went to the polls—and that in a city that has a significant Kurdish population.)

Meanwhile, there is important news about the resistance. On Sunday, the Post reported that the CIA is leaking more information about the Iraqi insurgency. Two important bits of news emerge here: One, that Zarqawi’s fanatics, the Al Qaeda branch in Iraq, “are now described as lesser elements,” i.e., the truth is finally coming out that the hooded killers and beheaders are not the true face of the resistance, which is in fact a popular movement with tens of thousands of supporters. That’s clear from the second tidbit in the story: that in 2004, U.S. forces killed or captured 15,000 “suspected insurgents,”—and that obviously does not count the many thousands killed or captured this year, including in the two battles of Fallujah.

As John McCain pointed out: “We’ve gone from a few dead-enders to killing or capturing 15,000 in the period of a year, and that’s why there is a certain credibility problem.”

Yesterday’s attack on a police station south of Baghdad drives this point home. The attack was massive and coordinated, with dozens of resistance fighters attacking Iraqi National Guard and police officers, killing 22, with 14 attackers dead.

The Post reports that in the past six months, at least 1,300 insurgents have been killed—no word on how many captured. U.S. detention centers in Iraq are reportedly bursting at the seams, though, with almost no reporting on the people held captive in them, many since the invasion itself in 2003.

Meanwhile: Ayatollah Sistani, the neoconservatives’ beloved democratic fundamentalist, is demanding that Islam be the “sole source” of Iraqi law. The crusty old ayatollah, who has posed as a Democrat even though he has given no interviews and not even left his house in years—except for a health-related visit to London earlier this year—managed to get his robotic followers out to the polls last month. Here’s part of the AFP story:

NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - Iraq's Shiite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and another top cleric staked out a radical demand that Islam be the sole source of legislation in the country's new constitution.

The surprise statement was released by Sheikh Ibrahim Ibrahimi, a representative of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Ishaq al-Fayad, another of the marja.

"All of the ulema (clergy) and marja, and the majority of the Iraqi people, want the national assembly to make Islam the source of legislation in the permanent constitution and to reject any law that is contrary to Islam," said the statement.

A source close to Sistani announced soon after the release of the statement that the spiritual leader backed the demand.

Those noted experts on Islam, Cheney and Rumsfeld, told TV audiences yesterday that people worried about Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq ought to, as Cheney put it, stop their “hand-wringing.” Rumseld, ever astute, noted: “The Shia in Iraq are Iraqis, they’re not Iranians.” (Someone needs to tell Rummy that Sistani is an Iranian.) He added: “And the idea that they’re going to end up with a government like Iran with a handful of mullahs controlling much of the country, I think, is unlikely.” Well, if it is unlikely, that’s because the resistance won’t let it happen.