Buckley on top form

WFB strikes a respectable balance between hope and caution over the recent historic elections in Iraq:

"The national elections in Iraq are putatively good news. What happened that was of great importance was the decision by the Sunni insurgents to permit people to vote without threatening death and mayhem. That license increased the participation rate from a little over 50 percent of eligible voters last January to about 70 percent on Thursday. We will not have long to wait before seeing whether the insurgents’ decision was an acknowledgment of political reality, or only a temporary maneuver calculated to reinforce their strength in showdowns to come. If a few weeks go by and there is a marked decrease in insurgent activity, then the events of December 15 will reasonably be viewed as a true turning point in this protracted struggle.

"It is wise to remember that democratic exercises are pointless except as they commit the participants to accepting the consequences of losing. If a political movement takes part in an election only in order to measure strength, intending no commitment to be instructed by the election's results, we have only illusory adjudications of power. There is insufficient evidence, as I write, of the strategic disposition of the Sunnis, either the secularists or the Islamists. When the insurgents gave out word that Iraqis were free to vote, was it implicit that voting in this election — held to choose 275 council representatives — frees them from prior obligations to ethnic and tribal attachments? In any case, there will be dissenters, as there are in societies with a long history of democracy, and the dissenters must be allowed to continue to dissent. But in a society unused to democratic dispositions, will the losers feel free to dissent from majority decisions at gunpoint? And is there anything that can be done to vitiate the perception that the resistance of the bitter-enders represents fidelity to the supernatural?"

Buckley's benchmark - " If a few weeks go by and there is a marked decrease in insurgent activity, then the events of December 15 will reasonably be viewed as a true turning point in this protracted struggle" - is, I expect, the same standard which will govern the output of the virulently anti-invasion bloggers, most of whom apparently have remained silent over the vote thus far.  As a wait-and-see kinda guy myself, I would welcome a similar ethos from that lot. But their usual practice of seemingly seizing on every bit of bad news, gleefully, leads me to think that most are simply biding their time.  Perhaps fortune will go their way again, and we'll learn of massive voter fraud, a theocratic "list" will dominate the assembly, or perchance an intrepid reporter will uncover another alleged Bush outrage.

Aegroto, dum anima est, spes esse dicitur.