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Iraq
Iraqi vote: Voice of the people
J. Grant Swank, Jr.Monday, December 19, 2005
"The time has come to build Iraq with our own hands and to use the great wealth that God has granted to Iraq to rebuild Iraq so that we can turn our poverty into wealth and our misery into happiness." The words of Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, according to the AP.
"Anybody who doesn’t appreciate what America has done and President Bush, let them go to hell," said Betty Dawish as she cast her ballot.
Eleven million voted. That’s estimated to be 70 percent of the eligible voting population.
They stood in long lines. They dressed up in finery. They draped their flag around their bodies. They danced in the streets. They defied Muslim terrorists. They shot gunfire into the air to celebrate their freedom. They smiled at the cameras. Some walked long distances for vehicles were prohibited in the streets.
"Last time, if you voted, you died. God willing, this election will lead to peace," said Abdul Jabbar Jahdi when voting in Baghdad.
"Happy days!" said Salim Saleh, a 52-year-old government official, finding a few remembered words of schoolboy English. Switching to Arabic, he slipped into reflective mode, acclaiming the advent of democracy in Iraq, but lamenting the local inexperience with it, according to the New York Times.
"Iraqis aren't used to democracy, we have to learn it," he said, after carefully marking and folding his poster-sized ballot. And what were the crucial elements? "A government that works in the interests of Iraq and the Iraqi people, regardless of ethnicity or sect," he said. "That would be democracy."
"Saddam, he's finished," said Mr. Saleh, the government employee.
"Saddam? No, no, no!" said Saad Abdul Sattar, a 51-year-old grocery store owner, with a sweep of his upturned palm.
"Before, we had a dictator, and now we have this freedom, this democracy," said Emad Abdul Jabbar, 38, a teacher acting as supervisor at the Ahrar school polling site. "This time, we have a real election, not just the sham elections we had under Saddam, and we Sunnis want to participate in the political process."
A 60-year-old merchant, Abdul Kader al-Saffar, and his wife, Ammal Abdul Razzaq, 40, who voted with their three sons, agreed. "We have found candidates in this election we can trust," Mr. Saffar said, referring to the Iraqi Consensus Front, a moderate Sunni group that had several of its political workers killed during the campaign.
According to the Washington Times: "Today is like a wedding day," said Hussein Hussein, wearing a conservative brown suit as he watched voters at polling stations in Baghdad's Harithiya district.
"The violence will be less because the Sunnis have come to vote, too. The people are much more united now. A lot of people came to vote today, even very old people came today," Mr. Hussein said.
"There will be a 100 percent change for the better, because Iraqis are united as one people," said Labib, an elderly man in a gray suit. Like many Iraqis, he was unwilling to give a reporter more than his first name.
Zuher Habib Yusef, neatly turned out in a blue suit and tie, said he hoped the high Sunni turnout would reduce support for al Qaeda leader Abu Musab Zarqawi, whose terror campaign has killed Iraqis by the hundreds.
"I think the violence will decrease by 50 percent," he said.
According to IrelandOnLine: US President George Bush called it "a major step forward in achieving our objective." US officials hope a broad-based government will be able to quell the bloodshed so that the US can begin to bring troops home next year.
But the incidents did little to discourage Iraqis, some of whom turned out wrapped in their flag on a bright, sunny day. Afterwards, many displayed a purple ink-stained index finger — a mark to guard against multiple voting.
U.S. officials saw the lack of violence as an encouraging sign.
"We should expect the insurgency not to just go away, but to gradually reduce," said Gen. George Casey, top U.S. commander in Iraq, speaking via video to a town hall-style meeting of Defense Department workers at the Pentagon.
With such jubilation, the free world should note these reality numbers in New Iraq:
Of course Americans don’t know these reality figures. Why?
Because the biased liberal press won’t tell us. Because they don’t like the US President George W. Bush. Because the Democrats hate Mr. Bush. Because the secularists don’t want anything positive coming out of the Republican party efforts for that party represents God-faith in America. Because the liberal media wants America to believe that Operation Iraqi Freedom was an occupation and not a liberation.
But the truth is reality numbers. And they are provided by the Department of Defense web site. If anyone can prove them wrong, let him try.
In the meantime, Mr. Bush stays the course. And for those who don’t like that phrase, considering it worn, let them. For staying the course will be around for a long, long time. It means that one does not give up. One keeps at it. One believes. One has faith. One has patience in time. In other words, one stays the course.
And for that we have voices in Iraq thanking liberty breezes blowing in their faces. May it all continue.
It would have come to this point a lot easier and more efficiently if only the Democrats had not sided with the Muslim terrorists and the American media had not done the same.
But the genuinely patriotic, represented by the President in particular, have stayed true to freedom spread. And that’s what counts for those long enslaved by despots such as Saddam Hussein.
May other oppressed peoples realize what is taking place in New Iraq and see it through where they live, too.
Copyright © 2005 by J. Grant Swank, Jr.
