WASHINGTON, 10 December 2004 — For a White House administration that likes to make the trains run on time, the Jan. 30 elections scheduled in Iraq are light at the end of a dark and violent tunnel.

US President George W. Bush’s administration insists that the date should hold firm, over objections from some Iraqi minority politicians, both as a point of pride and a matter of pragmatism. “This is a president who likes to manage an orderly process,” said Frederick Barton, co-director of the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Post-conflict transitions, and this one in particular, are chaotic.”

Bush was unequivocal Monday. “I believe it’s necessary for the Iraqi people to vote on January the 30th because it provides an opportunity for people to participate in democracy,” Bush said after a White House meeting with Iraq’s interim president. Holding the vote on time will “send a clear message to the few people in Iraq that are trying to stop the march to a democracy that they cannot stop elections,” Bush said.

Implicit in that statement is that delaying the elections would be a symbolic victory for terrorists and insurgents waging war on US troops.

Supporters of postponing the vote say it would allow time to reduce the violence and allow more people to vote. Seventeen minority political parties in Iraq have urged the interim government to put off the election for at least six months. The interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi, had been adamant about holding the elections as scheduled, but was quoted by a Belgium newspaper this week as saying Iraq might consider spreading the voting period over a period of up to three weeks to defuse the threat and allow for better protection of polling stations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday he doubts the election can be held on schedule. “Honestly speaking, I cannot imagine how it is possible to organize elections under the conditions of occupation by foreign forces,” Putin said in televised comments during a Kremlin meeting with Allawi. “I think there is the sense that it would look embarrassing for the president” to allow a delay now, said Peter W. Galbraith, a former US ambassador to Croatia and a senior fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation. Galbraith favors a go-slow approach, starting with partial elections in stable parts of the country.

“Yes, the appearance of postponing is bad, but the reality of holding (nationwide) elections is much worse,” Galbraith said.

Larry Diamond, a former official with the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, said the administration has genuine and practical reasons for pressing early elections.

A delay now runs the risk of alienating the Shiite majority, which was shut out of power under Saddam Hussein and is understandably eager to establish political primacy now, Diamond said. Fast elections also tend to favor the current Allawi government, which the United States sees as a valuable long-term ally, Diamond said. “And thirdly, I think the administration thinks that ... whatever the level of violence that may exist on January 30, it could be worse on April 30 or June 30 if they don’t go forward with elections,” Diamond said.

On that point, even sometime critics of the administration agree. “If you do delay, you just create another target date for the insurgents to go after,” said Lee Feinstein, a senior State Department adviser in the Clinton administration and now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

P.J. Crowley, a military adviser to former President Clinton, said with insurgents apparently prepared for a long fight, there is a risk in hinging the election to some determination that the country is safe enough. “Delaying once leaves a very real possibility there will be a delay a second or third time,” Crowley said. The Jan. 30 election is the first step in a lengthy political transition planned in Iraq. Any delay would almost certainly push back the date that American forces can begin a substantial withdrawal. That is a political risk the administration does not want to take, especially after arranging to place thousands of additional US troops in Iraq for the election, said Tufts University political science professor Tony Smith.

“If the Bush administration is planning to get out as soon as announced, there’s every reason to keep on schedule,” Smith said. Smith called the Iraq invasion and occupation “a terrible mistake.”

“They are now looking for their exit strategy from this terrible mistake.”