Jonathan Kay: Iraqi democracy is Bush's true legacy
[Jonathan Kay is a National Post columnist.]
On Saturday, Iraq conducted what may stand as the freest, fairest and most genuinely representative democratic elections the Arab world has ever witnessed. Yet even as the votes are being counted, the man responsible for this remarkable political revolution — who believed that Saddam Hussein's hellish dictatorship could be turned into a model Arab democracy, and mobilized the might of the most powerful nation on earth to do something about it — has already become something of a forgotten man.
George W. Bush made many mistakes during his presidency. But with Saturday's peaceful, vigorously contested election in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces, his overarching ambition of a robust democracy taking root in the heart of the Middle East seems to have become a reality. Notwithstanding the ongoing fawn-fest over Barack Obama, is it too much to ask that Mr. Obama's predecessor be given his due for accomplishing a task that, just a decade ago, during the dark days of Saddam's sadistic rule, would have seemed other-worldly?
This is not the first nominally free election that Iraq has witnessed: Representative democracy was inaugurated four years ago, amid photos of voters' ink-stained fingers pointed skyward for the cameras. But Iraq was then a terror-besieged charnel house in which whole regions were run by al-Qaeda spin-offs and sectarian militias. During that period, the violence was so bad that candidates could not even go out and meet voters, for fear of assassination. Moreover, the country's Sunni minority largely boycotted the 2005 election, giving rise to lop-sided Shiite majorities across the country.
This time, the Sunnis participated, which means the results will almost certainly yield a legislative mix whose composition at least approximates that of the population as a whole. What's more, many of the 14,000-plus candidates competing for the 440 seats up for grabs ran as something other than seat-holders for dogmatic sectarian or ethnic agendas — a welcome departure from the hard-line Shiite party lists that dominated the 2005 vote.
Many of the candidates were women, and some were overtly secular. What's more, the campaigning leading up to Saturday's vote was generally vibrant, with closely contested areas featuring a riot of Western-style campaign posters. Scattered violence, acts of intimidation, and even a handful of killings did take place in the lead-up to the vote, but Election Day itself was generally peaceful.
In light of this inspiring outcome, no one of good faith — not even those (like me) who believe that the invasion of Iraq was, on balance, a mistake — could possibly argue that Iraq was a better place when Saddam Hussein was still in power...
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On Saturday, Iraq conducted what may stand as the freest, fairest and most genuinely representative democratic elections the Arab world has ever witnessed. Yet even as the votes are being counted, the man responsible for this remarkable political revolution — who believed that Saddam Hussein's hellish dictatorship could be turned into a model Arab democracy, and mobilized the might of the most powerful nation on earth to do something about it — has already become something of a forgotten man.
George W. Bush made many mistakes during his presidency. But with Saturday's peaceful, vigorously contested election in 14 of Iraq's 18 provinces, his overarching ambition of a robust democracy taking root in the heart of the Middle East seems to have become a reality. Notwithstanding the ongoing fawn-fest over Barack Obama, is it too much to ask that Mr. Obama's predecessor be given his due for accomplishing a task that, just a decade ago, during the dark days of Saddam's sadistic rule, would have seemed other-worldly?
This is not the first nominally free election that Iraq has witnessed: Representative democracy was inaugurated four years ago, amid photos of voters' ink-stained fingers pointed skyward for the cameras. But Iraq was then a terror-besieged charnel house in which whole regions were run by al-Qaeda spin-offs and sectarian militias. During that period, the violence was so bad that candidates could not even go out and meet voters, for fear of assassination. Moreover, the country's Sunni minority largely boycotted the 2005 election, giving rise to lop-sided Shiite majorities across the country.
This time, the Sunnis participated, which means the results will almost certainly yield a legislative mix whose composition at least approximates that of the population as a whole. What's more, many of the 14,000-plus candidates competing for the 440 seats up for grabs ran as something other than seat-holders for dogmatic sectarian or ethnic agendas — a welcome departure from the hard-line Shiite party lists that dominated the 2005 vote.
Many of the candidates were women, and some were overtly secular. What's more, the campaigning leading up to Saturday's vote was generally vibrant, with closely contested areas featuring a riot of Western-style campaign posters. Scattered violence, acts of intimidation, and even a handful of killings did take place in the lead-up to the vote, but Election Day itself was generally peaceful.
In light of this inspiring outcome, no one of good faith — not even those (like me) who believe that the invasion of Iraq was, on balance, a mistake — could possibly argue that Iraq was a better place when Saddam Hussein was still in power...