This article was written in the hours just before the polls opened in Iraq on Sunday. Since then we've all been absorbing the remarkable, uplifting images of Iraqis by the millions -- of all ages, gender, ethnicity, faith -- celebrating in their "wedding finest" their hopes for their future, and with a degree of courage hard to fathom.
We still await the actual results of the Iraqis' historic exercise of their political voices - one which many of us around the world have long called for. Once the votes are counted, as I note in the article, we'll have a better sense of what possibilities face the Iraqis as they take their next steps toward self-governance.
While we wait the tally, there's been considerable reaction across the blogosphere. As the article indicates, I'm not surprised by the nature of most of that reaction, though I have to admit I'm sorely disappointed in many respects.
Where I can't say I'm disappointed, however, is that chez Nadezhda has been the beneficiary of some of that froth of blogospheric excitation, with links to this essay from a number of other blogs. We haven't been Instalanched, but we have been "Dispatched" and "Winded," among others. Thanks for the positive response, and our blogging service thanks you for the extra bandwidth fees!
praktike has an great roundup at Dean's Nation of some of the best responses to the elections (best from the viewpoint here at chez Nadezhda). The quotes he collects come from the center and center-left of the blogosphere. They reflect the best thinking of those whom Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation and Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, describes today as one side of the new cleavage emerging in US foreign policy.
In a must-read essay in The Washington Note, Clemons explains that the main cleavage of post World War II foreign policy was between the realists and the liberal internationalists -- setting to one side the more strictly "anti-war" left and the "pull-up-the-castle-gates" right . As Steve points out, the dividing lines are now shifting. Those of us whose intuitions draw on the heritage of the post-WWII generation -- Truman democrats (small d) if you will -- find ourselves on the other side of an emerging and vocal alliance of neo-con "heavy" and "lite."
The relative scarcity in the blogosphere of loud responses from Truman democrats is a warning of how rare a bird we "pragmatic optimists" are in the blogosphere. Not surprisingly, I personally believe that's an important absence that needs to be redressed with more efforts like ours here at chez Nadezhda and Liberals against Terrorism.
{update: Jan 31 11:45AM EST} by nadezhda
Though we don't yet have the election results, there are some interesting initial takeaways. The always reliable Dan Darling outdoes himself with an indepth report on the insurgency and security issues surrounding the election, and what it may mean for the Zarqawi jihadists.
Zarqawi suffered an unqualified defeat today - one that he is not likely to soon recover from. Not only did he fail at his purported desire to derail the Iraqi vote, but he was unable to carry out anything resembling the kind of operations that his group has mounted in the past in either the Kurdish or the Shi'ite areas of the country. This was literally his "make or break" moment in the eyes of the al-Qaeda leadership and goes to show just how limited the insurgency is to a single geographic area of the country, only being able to launch attacks in other areas such as Irbil or Basra with extensive preparation and planning.See "Iraqi Elections: Zarqawi Gambled -- and Lost."
{update: Jan 30 12:50AM EST} by nadezhda
Seems there's someone else who shares my suspicions of debating the metrics of success. Brad Plumer doesn't think much of any "armchair narrative we decide to impose tomorrow."
{Article originally posted by nadezhda Jan 29 2005 4:00PM EST}
Some years ago I concluded that the common abbreviation for the United States of America -- US -- is all too apt. We have become a self-absorbed nation and society that defines everything in terms of "us."
In part, that's just human nature. Recently, however, we've displayed a bit more human nature than is altogether healthy. And rarely more so than in what passes for analysis in the run-up to the Iraqi elections. SuperBowlWeek has nothing on IraqiElectionWeek as a content-free zone of emotionally-charged vapidity.
The phenomenon is shared across the entire political spectrum, but the item that compelled me to the keyboard this morning came from Andrew Sullivan, who asks what the measure for "success" should be on Sunday.
I asked myself, is this like Howie asking Bradshaw during the pregame show -- if they beat the point spread can we also call the Patriots a dynasty?
I single Sullivan out merely as an illustration of our collective self-absorption -- on both left and right -- that produces such a profoundly wrong-headed perspective on the world. A self-absorbed worldview is a dangerous one in an interdependent world such as our own.
Look folks, this is not about personal vindication or political point-scoring; about whether this proves you were right/wrong to support/oppose GW Bush's decision to invade Iraq or his Administration's conduct of the occupation. This is not about "I told you so."
On a far more serious note, this is not about the sacrifice by US troops who have died or whose lives will have been unimaginably altered by physical injury or psychic distress. This is certainly not about whether our troops should stay or go. And no, Andrew, regardless of the frequency or sincerity of your prayers, or how well-meaning your intentions, Sunday isn't going to be about "the democratic breakthrough [our troops] so richly deserve."
Nor is Sunday the first test of whether the US -- this time in the guise of "freedom" rather than missiles or bullets -- can effectively project its power to remake the world in the image it prefers.
We are reminded, by those who pass today as our sophisticated thinkers, to temper our expectations. Tomorrow, they note with profundity, will not dictate the "final" outcome .
Yet our pundits themselves should be forewarned -- tomorrow will also not determine which American narrative can be imposed on the uncertain and messy reality of the days, weeks, months and years to come, regardless of whether we "have some guidelines before Sunday so we don't just fit what happens to our pre-existing hopes or rationalizations."
So since American public discourse seems to require the game program to contain some viewer guidelines, I'll offer some.
Tomorrow is an essential, necessary baby step -- among many that have preceded it and will follow -- on the road to some sort of society or societies for the people who live within the boundaries of what we today call Iraq. To the extent we can eventually discern the results of Sunday's events, they may turn out, decades from now, to have been wonderful for many Iraqis, and an example that shames or inspires others in the region to undertake reforms of their own societies. The results may turn out to be a dysfunctional nightmare for many Iraqis, and the source of violence, instability and fear for their neighbors. The results -- and the processes of reaching them -- will, in all likelihood, be both.
Tomorrow will be terrible in both senses. In some places and for some people, Sunday will be a cause for extreme alienation and anxiety about the future. Many places and individuals will be visible victims of violence and carnage, or invisible victims of intimidation and fear. For other places and people, Sunday will be a compelling demonstration of humanity's potential when we are just given the opportunity to come together to build something worthwhile.
Tomorrow is just another day in the civil war within Islam -- a multi-sided conflict, not simply two sides facing each other on a recognizable battlefield along easy-to-draw lines of "secularists versus Islamists" or "Sunni versus Shi'a" or "global jihadist maximalists versus national politico-religious movements".
Tomorrow is indeed a momentous cause for celebration. It is the long-awaited first tangible step toward possibly redressing resolution of an 80-plus-year travesty of international realpolitik that left the Kurds in an unending prison of exploitation and created a source of instability that has had negative ripples across the lives of millions of people within and without the borders of Iraq.
Tomorrow is indeed historic. It is the remarkable step the Shi'a will take for the first time in hundreds of years to figure out what type of society they want to create now they have the possibility of meaningful influence.
We know those things in advance. Will some sort of "metrics" -- arbitrarily defined and applied by todays' wise men -- contribute in any meaningful way to our understanding?
Yes, we need some "expectations management" for watching the elections. But not as a means to protect our tender psyches from the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat. Instead, we need to ask ourselves what we can learn by watching -- how we might gain insights that adjust our expectations about the future behavior of ourselves and others.
The US has chosen to put itself in a position of affecting the lives of individual millions and the entire structure of the global world order. We need to have as much knowledge and information as we can about those whose lives we have turned upside down so we better understand the process going forward. So we might better anticipate the consequences of the infinite number of small actions we take and gestures we make in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. So we may be more capable of bringing some wisdom to the awesome responsibilities we have imposed upon ourselves.
So yes, some of what happens Sunday in Iraq is about the US -- but you know, it's not all about us.
The first afoe European weblog awards