Vote in Iraq

What the Bush team has done in Iraq, by ousting Saddam, was not to 8216;8216;liberate8217;8217; the country8212;an image and language imported from the West and inappropriate for Iraq8212;but rather to unleash the latent civil war in that country. Think of shaking a bottle of Champagne and then uncorking it.

This is not to say that the 8216;8216;liberation8217;8217; of Iraq8217;s people is impossible. But unlike in Eastern Europe8212;where a democratic majority was already present and crying to get out, and all we needed to do was remove the wall8212;in Iraq we first need to create that democratic majority.

That is what these elections are about. We don8217;t want the kind of civil war that we have in Iraq now. That is a war of Sunni and Islamist militants against the US and its Iraqi allies, many of whom do not seem comfortable fighting with, and seemingly for, the United States. America cannot win that war. That is a war in which the insurgents appear to be on the side of ending the US 8216;8216;occupation of Iraq8217;8217; and the United States and its allies appear to be about sustaining that occupation.

The civil war we want is a democratically elected Iraqi government against the Baathist and Islamist militants. It needs to be clear that these so-called insurgents are not fighting to liberate Iraq from America, but rather to reassert the tyranny of a Sunni-Baathist minority over the majority there. The insurgents are clearly desperate that they not be cast as fighting a democratically elected Iraqi government8212;which is why they are desperately trying to scuttle the elections. After all, if all they wanted was their fair share of the pie, and nothing more, they would be taking part in the elections.

We cannot liberate Iraq, and never could. Only Iraqis can liberate themselves, by first forging a social contract for sharing power and then having the will to go out and defend that compact against the minorities who will try to resist it. Elections are necessary for that process to unfold, but not sufficient. There has to be the will8212;among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds8212;to forge that equitable social contract and then fight for it.

In short, we need these elections in Iraq to see if there really is a self-governing community there ready, and willing, to liberate itself8212;both from Iraq8217;s old regime and from us. The answer to this question is not self-evident. This was always a shot in the dark8212;but one that I would argue was morally and strategically worth trying.

Because if it is impossible for the peoples of even one Arab state to voluntarily organise themselves around a social contract for democratic life, then we are looking at dictators and kings ruling this region. And that will guarantee it will be a cauldron of oil-financed pathologies and terrorism for the rest of our lives.

What is inexcusable is thinking that such an experiment would be easy, that it could be done on the cheap, that it could be done with any old army and any old coalition and any old fiscal policy and any old energy policy. That is the foolishness of George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

My foolishness was thinking they could never be so foolish.

Still, the game is not over. We know that the Iraqi people do not want to be ruled by us. But what we don8217;t know is how they want to rule themselves. What kind of majority are the Iraqi Shiites ready to be8212;a tolerant and inclusive one, or an intolerant and exclusive one? What kind of minority do the Iraqi Sunnis intend to be8212;rebellious and separatist, or loyal and sharing?

Elections are the only way to find out. Or, as Rumsfeld might say: You go to elections with the country you8217;ve got, not the one you wish you had8212;because that is the only way to find out whether the one you wish for is possible.

The New York Times