The End Of The Beginning

Today the people of Iraq turned out in record numbers to vote for their first democratically elected permanent parliament. They have voted before to put an interim government in power and to authenticate a national constitution. But today they took part in a genuine General Election. Even the Sunni's who had boycotted previous votes, and who are the backbone behind the violence and unrest plaguing the country turned out for this vote. Try as they might to derail the process of democracy, no amount of violence has deterred it, or slowed it.

I'm a supporter of what Britain and the United States have done in Iraq. Yes we went to war for the wrong reason. Everyone knows that. We supposedly went to war to prevent Saddam's regime from creating and deploying Weapons of Mass Destruction, which as it has turned out they likely never had. So our military intelligence was wrong. It happens. What the critics of the war seem to conviniently ignore is that we liberated a country the size of France, with a population of more than 30 million people from one of the most brutal tyrannies of modern times.

We took on a larger military force, that outnumbered our own in terms of troops and vehicles, and we defeated it, and we did it at a cost of less than a 1000 Allied lives. It is a high price to pay yes, but a small price compared to what that sacrifice achieved. The invasion was the easy part, the rebuilding, the "war for peace" so to speak, has proven far harder. Barely a day goes by without news of some bomb, kidnapping, suicide attack or beheading being carried out in Iraq, and the body count seems to never stop rising. I have huge respect for the people of that country who still went out to vote when called upon to do so. Even knowing that some fanatic could blow himself up, and them with him while they queued to vote, they still went out and queued. I'm not sure I could do that.

It will take a week or two for the results of the polls to be counted and authenticated, and for the outcome to be known. That is for then, but today I have hope that a truly democratic, modern Iraq can emerge from the voting today. This isn't the end, it's not even the beginning of the end, that day is still a way off, but this is I think, the end of the beginning.