Iraq Election Results

Iraq Election Results:

InstaPundit has several links to some early hand-wringing over the Iraqi Election results. I'm disinclined to it myself. Publius in particular feels that a worsened civil war is likely.

Well, perhaps it is. It seems more likely to me, however, that Iraq's tribal factions will prefer an alternative to war if one can be found. The early American process seemed to teeter at all times on the brink of collapse, and yet managed time and again to achieve breakthrough compromises at the last minute. In the second American Constitutional process, which we normally call Reconstruction, again there were rejectionists and people who threatened violence at every turn. Eventually, the constitutional process absorbed them -- and through it, they won enough concessions to satisfy them. I have long felt that Reconstruction was the best model for understanding the situation in Iraq, and I still think so.

I suspect that we will see a similar process at work here, the hot rhetoric notwithstanding: anyone who has ever watched haggling in the traditional fashion knows that the rhetoric can get very hot indeed, and yet both parties know from the start of the transaction that the one fellow is going to buy what the other is selling.

The Sunnis will bargain hard for the things they want and can't get through simple votes, because they are a minority. Yet they have been bargaining all along, using violence and insurgency. The political process, though turbulent, is nevertheless an improvement.

Indeed, the fact that the religious parties did well is a good sign even though it is worrying some observers. It means that they have a stake in the process, and even the biggest stake. While pushing for changes to the Iraqi constitution, they yet now must be defenders of the basic constitutional order. This is particularly true for the Sunnis, who have heretofore been the chief insurgents. As a political faction, they can wield the power of a protected minority in order to win compromises from the central government. The local control of their tribal homelands is assured, so what they are bargaining for is "extras" they would like. Like the Redemptionists of the American South, that local control is their main desire. They wish to protect their way of life as they see it.

If they abandon the constitution and go back to insurgency as a primary means, they could easily end up losing that control. Just as the South of 1878 had no desire to return to military occupation, so the Sunnis will not wish to see a return of major counterinsurgency operations in their cities. It cannot serve them; they will not wish to see Iraqi Army units, commanded by a Shi'ite government, occupying their cities. They know that the Marines were very gentle by comparison. Thus they will pull back from the brink. However hot the rhetoric gets, and in spite of the occasional "night riding," they will stand behind the shield the political process offers them. Therefore that process will take hold, in spite of and because of the suspicions and aspirations of the factions.