Iraq: Election Commentary Continues
As expected, Sunday’s election has elicited a flurry of analysis from all corners of the foreign policy community. “Democracy has finally arrived,” writes Bret Stephens at the Wall Street Journal, hailing the successful election [subscription required] as a vindication of the last 7 years of U.S. policy in Iraq, however messy it may have been. Robert Dreyfuss isn’t ready to eschew his pessimism just yet, saying that “despite the hopeful straws in the wind, big chunks of Iraq are still unwilling to accept the results if it doesn’t go their way.” Brett McGurk of the Council on Foreign relations is encouraged by the success of the Iraqi-led effort to organize and secure the election. Yet Daniel Pipes is “despondent,” calling Sunday’s showing a “cosmetic election” that will not sustain positive momentum once the U.S. withdraws its troops.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board agrees with McGurk that Iraqis should “take heart in the fact that their own security forces capably provided protection,” and the Wall Street Journal, though equally exuberant over the election and impressed with the resilience of the Iraqi people, cautions that Iraq is still vulnerable to post-election violence and potentially destabilizing Iranian influences. And while the New York Times hopes that Iraq’s leaders will seize the momentum and quickly arrange a government based upon inclusion and ethnic diversity, the Guardian is less convinced that an Iraq still plagued by inefficient institutions, poor social service delivery systems, and pervasive corruption will achieve political reconciliation any time soon.
Elsewhere, Foreign Policy has published a thoughtful roundtable discussion on post-election prospects for both Iraqi domestic politics and U.S. regional policy. Journalists Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Washington Post), Anthony Shadid (New York Times), Charles Levinson (Wall Street Journal), and Leila Fadel (Washington Post) each drew upon their ground-level experiences to analyze Sunday’s significance moving forward.
