Mullahs and ballots and bombs - oh my!

So they held an election in Iraq and lots of people came, although with the possibility of at least 80,000 names illegally registered, but this new birth of freedom, as some would have it, was a difficult labor and the question remains: is an election held and manipulated by an occupying foreign power really an election? Is an election by itself really an exercise in political freedom anyway?

"We need a powerful person who rules the country without wanting to finish unsettled business like the Shiite politicians do," says a young Sunni voter quoted by Newsweek. That is, no doubt, what type of leader they will elect and he is right. Unfortunately Strong Man politics and civil liberty don’t dance well together, particularly in a violent place full of ancient hatred and passionate religious beliefs.

Our founding fathers were quite concerned to eliminate religious dogmas and passions from our government, knowing that it leads inevitably to tyranny, but there is no chance of that in Iraq: a country filled with God, guns, plastic explosives and anger. It will take a powerful person, ruling rather than administrating, like the former Shah of Iran or the powerful Ayatollahs who replaced him when we, in another attempt to spread “freedom,” allowed him to fall. It will take a man like Saddam at worst or Mubarak at best, but if the country of Iraq survives as a single political entity, it will have “A powerful person who rules the country.”

"It's going to take some time for them to learn democracy," said Sgt. Eric Mallette, who spends most of his days patrolling Kirkuk's highways for the roadside bombs that still account for most U.S casualties in Iraq. "You can't just throw some alligator clips in there and change 2,000 years of culture."

How close we are to understanding and how far we are from admitting it.