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Legitimacy and Elections
I agree with an awful lot of what Charles Krauthammer said in Friday's column (denounced by Marshall Whittman in a manner that makes me wonder how many "national greatness" advocates I want on my side...) which makes me feel pretty dirty, so let me single out the part I disagree with most and criticize it:
In 1864, 11 of the 36 states did not participate in the presidential election. Was Lincoln's election therefore illegitimate?As is so often the case, this is Krauthammer the polemicist getting in the way of Krauthammer the analyst. What's at issue here isn't whether or not the January election will be Legimate in some abstract realm of the forms. The question is whether the election will, as the administration maintains, be useful in drying up support for the insurgency. That leads to the issue of whether or not the election will be seen as legitimate by the Sunni Arab population that is the social base of support for the insurgency. Using Krauthammer's analogy, it's certainly the case that no southern whites regarded Lincoln's re-election in 1864 as significantly changing their view of the desirability of participating in the Union political process rather than seceeding. Now as it happens, I think Krauthammer is right that whether or not the security situation improves in the Sunni Triangle isn't especially relevant to this -- Sunni Arabs will regard the elections as worth little since they can't possibly win, whether or not they can turn out to vote. Nevertheless, it's important to see what's going on here. He's very right about this, though: "People keep warning about the danger of civil war. This is absurd. There already is a civil war."In 1868, three years after the security situation had, shall we say, stabilized, three states (not insignificant ones: Texas, Virginia and Mississippi) did not participate in the election. Was Grant's election illegitimate?
There has been much talk that if the Iraqi election is held and some Sunni Arab provinces (perhaps three of the 18) do not participate, the election will be illegitimate. Nonsense.
November 28, 2004 | Permalink
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Comments
Juan Cole has some comments about Krauthammer also.
Posted by: Dan the Man | Nov 28, 2004 11:51:55 PM
your assumption that there is a "krauthammer the analyst" is incorrect. it does seem to me, in misty memory, that there once was a "krauthammer the analyst," but frankly, to call him a polemicist is much too generous.
Posted by: howard | Nov 28, 2004 11:57:56 PM
Juan Cole's comment is the most relevant. Since this isn't an Iraqi election of a president and a Congress, but just a unusual form of election of a body to write the rules for the permanent government, comparisons to the 1860's here are not meaningful. After reading Cole I have to wonder why the US didn't just collect an ad hoc group of Iraqis from the various factions and have them hash out the form and method of governing Iraq. I know we claim to have done that, but in reality we pretty well dictated what they were allowed to agree on. Much better to have invited the various tribal leaders to send in whomever they wanted on that body and let them do the job without our "advice".
Posted by: Vaughn Hopkins | Nov 29, 2004 12:08:41 AM
This is just one more datapoint that goes to show that unlike at least some other neocons, Krauthammer doesn't really believe in democracy promotion at all. What he believes in is humiliating Arabs and Iranians and making them suffer. And Communists too. Period.
So from that perspective, we've already finished our job in Iraq. Let them have their silly election. Their civil war ain't our problem.
Posted by: JP | Nov 29, 2004 12:14:08 AM
Reporters have been raising the issue of "electoral legitimacy" in DoD press conferences. So I don't see a problem with an op-ed discussing solely that question, which doesn't mean there aren't more important questions to answer.
Nov. 8 Rumsfeld Press Briefing
SEC. RUMSFELD: We'll make this the last question.
Q Mr. Secretary, you once said that if the elections in Iraq were less than perfect, so be it, I think were your words. How confident are you that when elections come in January, they'll be able to take place without a significant segment of the Iraqi population being left out of those elections?*
*click the above link if interested in Rumsfeld's (non) answer.
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Nov 29, 2004 12:23:26 AM
I do think it's ironic, though, that Kristof has a column about staying the course in Iraq at the same time Krauthamer has a column paving the way for cutting and runnning.
Posted by: SoCalJustice | Nov 29, 2004 12:40:59 AM
In politics, perception often makes or trumps reality. The elections in Iraq will be legitimate if the Iraqi people perceive them to be such. I'm guessing they won't.
Posted by: pablo | Nov 29, 2004 1:01:20 AM
I'm curious how much of Krauthammer's musings Matt finds himself in agreement with.
Krauthammer's point is that up until now the US has borne the cost of fighting for a united Iraq. He deplores this because "this is the Shiites' and Kurds' fight." (Presumably not ours, even though we opened Pandora's Box here and, by international law, we as occupiers are responsible for security in the country.) He then proceeds with this entirely cynical statement:
Seven months ago I wrote in this space that while our "goal has been to build a united, pluralistic, democratic Iraq in which the factions negotiate their differences the way we do in the West" that "may be, in the short run, a bridge too far. . . . [W]e should lower our ambitions and see Iraqi factionalization as a useful tool."
How? Presumably by making the Shiites -- once they win the election, as they surely will -- to crush the Sunnis. As he puts it: "It is their civil war."
Very convenient to wash ones hands of the whole problem. And it begs the question about whether or not it would work out in a way that is in America's long-term interests.
Posted by: ScrewyRabbit | Nov 29, 2004 1:05:38 AM
The Iraqi elections have the approval of the UN, i.e. according to liberals, of God. So what's the problem? We have the election and if the Sunnis don't want to participate that's their look-out. They're only only 20% of the population. The new Shiite-Kurd government stomps the crap out of the Sunnis, and we take it from there.
Democracy is a messy process, and liberals don't like it in Iraq any more than they do in the US. But liberals can deal with it. They're used to losing. They always do: McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry. Most of all, liberals *want* to lose. Childishness and self-righteousness are so much more fun than responsibility.
Liberals have a way on betting on the losing team. They bet on the Soviet Union and the rest is history. They bet on Saddam. That one isn't over. Liberals are still betting on Saddam, or his successors. The battle is raging tonight. The liberals, the American haters, the anti-Semites, the cowards, the enemies of freedom and honor and decency are betting on the terrorists to win. The battle rages. Matthew, you strike me as a decent human being. In your heart, which side are you on?
Posted by: Joe Willingham | Nov 29, 2004 1:07:47 AM
Wow Joe, you hit every major talking point in the dittohead agitprop playbook. You must have it open right there in front of you.
I think it's time to put away the airplane glue, though, it's making you rant.
Posted by: ScrewyRabbit | Nov 29, 2004 1:21:33 AM
"Very convenient to wash ones hands of the whole problem."
Waa! Iraq toy broken. Me want new toy to play with.
Posted by: Charles Krauthammer | Nov 29, 2004 2:01:15 AM
Was the French Resistance a civil war?
Sure there has been some targeting of mosques by one side or the other, but clearly the vast marjority of Iraqi on Iraqi attacks have been targeted on the police, national guard and army, all (and quite reasonably) seen as agents for an American occupier. (And I am not ignorant of the fact that many of the victims have been innocent bystanders, on the US side think 'wedding party')
Buried (but not deeply) in the argument here is that the US occupation is acting as a buffer between the Shi'ia and the Sunni, the only thing preventing all-out civil war. Perhaps but we are far from a QED. The case still needs to be made that the US presence in a net security gain for Iraqi cities. To me the case is as shaky as the one for Iraqi WMD's, and made by many of the same people. Absent the US thumb on the scale what is the evidence that Sunnis and Shi'ias wouldn't be able to cut a deal? Because there is more than a whiff of 'White Man's Burden' blowing in here.
Posted by: Bruce Webb | Nov 29, 2004 3:34:52 AM
There is no civil war there, it's the resistance to the occupation.
If the occupation ends tomorrow, they'll first kill Mr. Allawi and then, with any luck, they'll have a convention of their religious leaders and form an Iranian-style government - half democratic/half theocratic; a constitutional theocracy, if you wish.
And, god willing, it'll be strong, stable and representative government.
Posted by: abb1 | Nov 29, 2004 3:50:30 AM
"In 1864, 11 of the 36 states did not participate in the presidential election. Was Lincoln's election therefore illegitimate?"
Only in so far as he claimed to be President of the states that seceeded, too.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Nov 29, 2004 7:42:11 AM
Charles Krauthammer ("cabbage pounder") is a typical horse's ass. The thought that WaPost gives him a few dead trees for his bloviations is amusing.
Posted by: raj | Nov 29, 2004 8:18:43 AM
Bush lied and people died. What more do you need to know?
Posted by: Steve | Nov 29, 2004 8:57:48 AM
Hmm. I wonder if Krauthammer reminds his readers of what happened to the legitimately-elected President of the 1864 elections?
"Apart from that Mrs. Allawi, how did you enjoy the play?"
Posted by: oodja | Nov 29, 2004 9:12:30 AM
Wow, Willingham thinks liberals are all communistts, while Bellmore thinks the North was wrong about the Civil War.
The trolls are really in amazing form today . . .
Posted by: rea | Nov 29, 2004 10:13:31 AM
This is all part of the burgeoning "fuck the Sunnis" strategy that Zakaria warned about some time ago.
Posted by: praktike | Nov 29, 2004 10:54:18 AM
I think that, from a legal perspective, the argument that the South didn't have a right to secede was BS. "Try that and we'll kill you!" may be persuasive, but it's not a legal argument.
This judgment is entirely separate from my opinion of slavery, and of whether the south SHOULD have seceded.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Nov 29, 2004 11:04:23 AM
I think the US goal has never been to create democracy in the middle east. We've always been happy with pro-Western dictatorships (Saudis or Pakistan). I think our goal was to create a civil war in Iraq. Not between Sunni and Shiite, but between pro-West and radical Islam. As long as the election establishes a reasonably Pro-West faction in power, we will declare it legitimate and leave.
Posted by: Just Karl | Nov 29, 2004 1:08:41 PM
You are correct Matt.
The Krauthammer is stupid.
11 states did not vote in 1864.
In 1865, those 11 states continued to fight the US after the 1864 election.
So if this is the analogy, then Krauthammer is saying the election will not end the insurgency. Duh.
The US has two choices in Iraq.
We can leave now and Iraq will be unsafe for Americans and westerners well into the future.
or
We can stay and kill another 100,000 Iraqis and Iraq will be unsafe for Americans and westerners well into the future.
Posted by: bakho | Nov 29, 2004 1:49:16 PM
"There is no civil war there, it's the resistance to the occupation"
Which is why in Falluja, when the insurgents were in control prior to the last offensive, they killed most any Shia they were able to get their hands on. Sorry, but it's not that black and white.
Posted by: Campesino | Nov 29, 2004 2:48:12 PM
It's pretty close to that black and white; It's just that Bakho is viewing the negative.
Posted by: Brett Bellmore | Nov 29, 2004 5:25:14 PM
Krauthammer's Straussianism is showing. The question is whether the United States had any legitimate authority at all in those eleven states, since they seceded from the union by the very same procedure that they had used to accede to it in 1787-90.
Posted by: Kevin Carson | Nov 29, 2004 9:54:26 PM
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