(Wall Street Journal) Kanan Makiya - The size of the turnout, irrespective of the outcome, establishes that the Iraqi elections will go down in history as a defining event in the future of the Middle East. This moment is what the 2003 war was all about. A democratic process is now a demonstrable reality in an Arab and Muslim country. No wonder the political and intellectual elites of the Arab world are so worried, and no wonder they were so hostile to everything that happened in Iraq since the overthrow of the Saddam regime. The terrible lesson of Palestinian politics is that a leadership that elevates victimhood into the be-all and end-all of politics brings untold suffering and misery upon its own people. Given political power, this kind of a leadership will in turn victimize. This is an iron law of social and political psychology confirmed by any number of recent historical experiences. Since 1968, the Baath have been trashing the only idea that can hold the great social diversity of Iraq together: the idea of Iraq. Their answer to the question "Who am I?" was: You are either one of us, or you are dead. They killed anyone who dared to say he was a Kurd or a Shiite or a leftist, or a democrat and a liberal. The writer is the founder of the Iraq Memory Foundation.
2005-02-09 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive