LONDON, 29 September 2004 — We thought Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq for as long as it took to see perfect democracy reign, until Baghdad was a Swiss-style model of purity for the Middle East. But now he coughs and look around and head for the fire exit. Well, what is perfection?
“We had something like 200 or 300 or 400 people killed in the major cities of America last year and is that perfectly peaceful? No. What’s the difference? We just didn’t see every homicide in every major city in the United States on television every night.” The secretary of defense is talking about the moment when Iraq seems calm enough to quit. He is also talking about what kind of an election next January lets the Pentagon leave the party early.
For there’s a new tale in town, one eddying back and forth across a chorus of lips. Perhaps it began in Baghdad itself a couple of weeks ago when ministers started to say openly that not everywhere in Iraq needed to vote to make January a legitimate election. After all, in the US or the UK, 50 percent turnout — or even 40 percent, come to that — was deemed viable enough to build an administration on. Why set the Baghdad bar higher? Or perhaps the script was basically written further away, in a back office of Washington DC: For it was also a variation on the theme that George Bush and Iraq’s caretaker prime minister, Iyad Allawi, chanted on the White House lawn last week. Was there trouble in Iraq? Not on any national scale, they crooned. Maybe in no more than two or three provinces out of 18. That slipped by when they first sang their verses.
But look now, coldly at what’s involved. Welcome to the Sunni triangle, continuing heartland of resistance, rebellion and terrorism. It stretches, you’ll remember, from Baghdad in the east to Ramadi in the west, and pokes north to Tikrit, Saddam’s hometown; and never, of course, forget Fallujah, boiling away in the middle. These aren’t small, insignificant spots. Fallujah has upward of a quarter of a million population, Ramadi is touching 400,000 — and the Sunni areas of Baghdad run into millions. Now, how would Blair fare if he announced that the Hampstead triangle — from the smart north London suburb to London Luton airport to Oxford and back — was too wild to vote next May, but that the rest of London, and the towns Chelmsford and Abingdon could go ahead as per normal? How would Bush deal with the loss of his Stetson square, otherwise Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin?
Yet that, in broadly proportionate terms and with all due seriousness, is what’s being suggested for Iraq. Any election, apparently, is better than none. A PR voting system based on nationwide party lists apparently makes it easier to leave Fallujah or Ramadi out. Fifteen semi-peaceful provinces, at least, can do their own thing and confer a certain legitimacy on the rulers they choose. Apparently. Rumsfeld says that three-quarters of an election is better than none. But, of course, it’s rubbish — and rubbish made worse by that national voting system. How many millions of Sunnis would be denied their chance at the polls and thus their full, legitimate stake in the regime that follows Allawi? What use is a block vote if the blocks are knocked away? Where, when that happens, lies any hope of democratic acceptance and reconciliation? There is no legitimate government waiting down that road. There is only a greater Shiite Muslim hegemony founded on an exclusion that makes the 60 percent Shiite majority more powerful yet. After our own dear rotten boroughs comes the rotten triangle. Why on earth suppose otherwise?
Because the bind is tighter and more desperate than ever. Because Allawi needs something he can call a mandate. Because the Shiites are (rightly) restive. Because Western public opinion (full of voters itself) has been told to hail Iraqi democracy in a torrent of jargon about crucibles and epicenters. The real debate, as usual, seems to sit between the Pentagon and State Department. Richard Armitage, Colin Powell’s outspoken point man, tells a congressional committee that “we’re going to have those elections in all parts of the country” and “open to all citizens”. Donald Rumsfeld, meanwhile, observes that big American cities had hundreds of murders a year, so many that TV didn’t always get round to reporting them. But does that mean America can’t vote on Nov. 2? No way, says Don. Turn out and beat the assault weapon ban.
And there, in the distance, you can hear the theme swell. George W. hailing the defeat of terrorism — at least in America, if not Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Madrid and points east. Here’s the solution we’ve been hungering for through the years, the ultimate miracle of half-full not half-empty. Call it the 50 percent solution, turned sunny side up.
