Posted on 01/30/2005 1:18:21 PM PST by saquin
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 30 - Batool Al Musawi hesitated for a single moment.
The explosions had already begun as she rose from her bed early today. One after the other, the mortar shells were falling and bursting around the city, rattling the windows and shaking the walls.
For an instant, Ms. Musawi, a 22-year-old physical therapist, thought it might be too dangerous to go to the polls.
"And then, hearing those explosions, it occurred to me - the insurgents are weak, they afraid of democracy, they are losing," Ms. Musawi said, standing in the Marajayoon Primary School, her polling place. "So I got my husband and I got my parents and we all came out and voted together."
Across this corner of Baghdad, in a middle-class, predominately Shiite neighborhood called Karada, thousands of Iraqis appeared to make a similar mental calculation, and thousands, it was clear, had made the same decision as Ms Musawi. They poured into the high schools and elementary schools that had been transformed into polling places, passing through barbed wire, braving threats and car bombs, all to seize a long-awaited chance to help move their country in a direction they wanted.
It seemed simple enough, and the ease with which the Iraqis marked their ballots and dropped them into the box, and the quiet with which they filed out of their polling places, bespoke a long-suppressed yearning finally set free.
If there were doubts about the ability of ordinary Iraqis to grasp the first principles of democratic rule, and about their own desire to govern themselves after decades of tyranny, they seemed to evaporate in the polling places of Karada.
All through the day, the bombs kept going off, the explosions audible inside the polling places themselves. Most of the time, the Iraqis did not even bother to look up, so inured were they to violence and so immersed in their democratic moment.
"Do you hear that, do you hear the bombs?" said Hassan Jawad, a 33-year-old election worker at Lebanon High School, speaking over the thud of an exploding shell. "We don't care. Do you understand? We don't care."
"We all have to die," Mr. Jawad said. "To die for this, well, at least I will be dying for something."
And then Mr. Jawad got back to work, guiding an Iraqi woman's hand to the ballot box.
Outside the polling places, the voting itself had a transforming effect, turning Karada's normally grim and edgy streets into the scene of a party. With vehicular traffic banned throughout the city, Iraqis walked the streets to their polling places and then stayed outside, milling about, and laughing and joking in a way that has rarely been seen in 22 months of occupation and war. Parents looked on as their children kicked soccer balls. Men and women walked together.
One of the leading candidates for prime minister, Adil Abdul Mahdi, strolled down Karada's main thoroughfare, for this day unprotected by an armored car and bullet-proof glass - as is usually the case.
"Peace be upon you!" the Iraqis called to him.
The morning opened with a tense and uncertain feel, with American troops and the Iraqi police clutching their rifles and assuming menacing stares.
The first Iraqis on the streets seemed tense as well, not smiling and not waving back. But as the day unfolded, and more and more voters took to the streets, a momentum seemed to gather, and by mid-morning Karada's main street was jammed with people who had voted and people on their way to vote.
Some Iraqis, walking out of the polling places, used their cellphones to call friends and urge them to come. Some banged on their neighbors' doors and dragged them out of bed. Old men rolled up in wheelchairs. Women came in groups, lining up in their long, black, head-to-toe abayas.
The outpouring, which filled Karada's streets with Shiites, Christians and even some Sunnis, surprised the Iraqis themselves. When Ehab Al Bahir, a captain in the Iraqi Army, arrived at Marjayoon Primary School, he braced himself for insurgent attacks. The mortar shells arrived, as he anticipated, but so did the Iraqi voters, which he did not.
"I never expected so many people," Captain Bahir said, shaking his head and looking down a line of Iraqis outside the school. "I'm in charge of 30 polling places, and they are all saying the same thing. Hundreds of people are coming out to vote. One place said they there are already up to a thousand."
As he spoke, a well-dressed Iraqi man named Rashid Majid, 80, pushed his way past the guards and stepped through the schoolhouse doors.
"Get out of my way," Mr. Majid said, hurrying by. "I want to vote."
For all the choices on the ballot - there were 111 lists of candidates - the talk in Karada was less of who might win and who might lose than of the act of voting itself. And while few Iraqis professed to know exactly how democracy might end the violence, they seemed certain that they had entered a new and more decent time.
"We have freedom now, we have human rights, we have democracy," said Mr. Majid said. "We will invite the insurgents to take part in our system. If they do, we will welcome them. If they don't, we will kill them."
Not all Iraqis took part in the festivities, or in the voting. Turnout was said to be lower in the capital's Sunni-dominated neighborhoods like Azimiyah and Gazalia. Even in Karada, some Iraqis refused to take part in elections that they said had been foisted on them by the Americans.
"It is not fear that prevents me from voting, but the elections themselves," said Immad Muneer, 50, sitting on the sidewalk with the friend. "The candidates who get elected will not be able to demand that the foreign forces leave our country; they will be puppets moved by other people."
Yet for most Iraqis in Karada, the election that came off today seemed the very opposite of the affairs that Saddam Hussein had staged before. Indeed, Mr. Hussein's 34 years of terror seemed to hang over nearly every conversation in the polling centers.
Uday Al Rubaie, a 27-year-old taxi driver once under a death sentence for spreading Shiite religious leaflets, recalled the voting in 2002, when Iraqis were asked to vote "yes" or "no" on retaining Mr. Hussein. Mr. Rubaie said he had showed up late for the voting then, only to find that election workers had already marked "yes" for him. Mr. Hussein claimed to have captured 104 percent of the vote.
When the polls opened today, Mr. Rubaie walked two hours for the chance to cast his ballot. He walked into Marjayoon Primary School, wiping his brow.
"Look at the sweat on my forehead," he said. "I've come a very long way."
"We will invite the insurgents to take part in our system. If they do, we will welcome them. If they don't, we will kill them."
This is wonderful! Here's to hoping Iran will follow in their foot steps!!!!
The quote of the day.
Where are all those leftist activists shouting "power to people"?
God bless the USA and the Iraqi's who are seizing the moment.
The Iraqi's seem genuinely proud to raise their "ink stained" fingers to the world.
I remember something about another recent election where an indelible black ink dot was put on the hands of voters (can't remember where).
WHY IS IT that such a thing would be b4 the Supreme Court in this country because a few of the race warlords (and most of the democrats) would see it as "disenfranchisement because they wouldn't be allowed to vote multiple times under multiple identities?
This enquiring mind would really, really like to know....
Now there'san Iraqi I can relate to.
"And then, hearing those explosions, it occurred to me - the insurgents are weak, they afraid of democracy, they are losing," Ms. Musawi said, standing in the Marajayoon Primary School, her polling place. "So I got my husband and I got my parents and we all came out and voted together."
The Iraqi's seem genuinely proud to raise their "ink stained" fingers to the world.
I remember something about another recent election where an indelible black ink dot was put on the hands of voters (can't remember where).
WHY IS IT that such a thing would be b4 the Supreme Court in this country because a few of the race warlords (and most of the democrats) would see it as "disenfranchisement because they wouldn't be allowed to vote multiple times under multiple identities?
This enquiring mind would really, really like to know....
Clear, simple and perfect ~ what a great statement!
And the perfect comeback to that is... if it wasn't the reason we went into Iraq, why was the operation called OIF, "Operation Iraqi Freedom"?
Iraq, the home of the brave.
Exactly, and where were all the "human shields" who could have gone to Iraq to help protect voting places?
yep!
Excellent point. The left is so FOS. Yet, today is a day to savor and celebrate!
Well, technically military operational names aren't supposed to reveal the nature of the op, so the word "freedom" is irrelevant. Of course, the rule is mostly honored in the breach.
This is cracking me up!! Go grandpa!! And walking 2 hours to vote- wow that's something. I am so glad the iraqis are embracing freedom and democracy!
Check out Andy Sullivan's(?) posts over at DU. After wading thru the other BS, he appears to be one of the few DUmmies insterested in non-partisan election refrom. The DUmmies are all for election reform (transparecy & paper trails re machines) but not voter reform (voter IDs, cemetary voting, etc.) Its really sad, but alot of DUmmies won't sign on merely b/c Andy includes both in the same package.
That tells me all I need to know about their motivations.
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