King Abdullah of Jordan Warns of Extremist Victory in Iraqi Elections

Following in his father’s footsteps, Jordan’s King Abdullah II has spoken unpleasant truth to his friends in the west. In an interview with the French daily Le Figaro, His Majesty warned that if elections go ahead in Iraq in January, the extremists will win. The logic is compellingly simple, and it suggests that democracy in Iraq may turn out to be a very African sort of affair – one man, one vote, one time.

King Abdullah said, according to an Associated Press translation, that it “seems impossible to organize indisputable elections in the chaos of Iraq today.” Nonetheless, Prime Minister Allawi’s cabinet seems intent on holding the vote in January. If that occurs, warns the King of Jordan, “the best organized faction will be the extremists. The results will reflect this advantage of the extremists. In such a scenario, there will be no chance that the situation gets better."

Democracy reflects the passion of the people more often than their thoughtful will. In desperate times, these passions are far greater. This is not a quirk of Arab or Kurdish culture but rather human nature. In the 1930s, Germany could have gone Communist almost as easily as it went Nazi. What doesn’t happen in tough times is the emergence of a reasonable center able to legislate via compromise and negotiation. Men and women don’t become suicide bombers for an extra 1% in the sales tax to fund after school programs.

Iraq has had a perverted civil society since before the Saddamite regime took power. Ba’athism infiltrated it at every level. Only its own inefficiency prevented it from winning the title “totalitarian.” What organizations that did survive with some resistance to the Ba’athist infection were extreme because only extremists were prepared to resist such all-encompassing rottenness. But that doesn’t make them the good guys. Under the robes of Moqtada al-Sadr, the careful listener can hear the heels of the jackboots.

A fair and free election that chooses a theocracy for Iraq would be a decisive defeat for Mr. Bush’s dream of an Iraq with liberty and justice for all. It would look much like Iran, without some of the openness. It is hard to believe that almost 1,200 coalition troops have died to give Iraq to the mullahs. The promised elections have been postponed in Afghanistan, and rightly so. Iraq is no different.


© Copyright 2004 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.


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