Lessons in Elections From an Ayatollah

Who would have believed that an Iraqi ayatollah would be teaching the United States about the importance of direct elections, and that the Bush administration would be resisting the idea? Who would have thought that the United States would try to export the Iowa caucuses to Iraq when the essence of the caucuses violates the first principle of a fair election: a secret ballot?

Some think that our problem in Iraq is that the Pentagon had a plan for winning the war but no plan for what to do next, yet the real problem was that its postwar posture was based on mistaken lessons of history. The Pentagon’s advisors to Iraq thought they were going to Japan and Germany after World War II. The United States, they figured, would rebuild the country by itself, and the local people would obey.

But instead of asking how the Iraqi occupation was similar, they should have asked how it differed.

The answer is: in many ways, it turns out, but two are particularly pertinent. First, the United Nations in the last half-century has grown legs and has conducted dozens of peacekeeping and peace-building operations. It lacks power, but it alone has the legitimacy for handling a postwar dilemma as difficult as Iraq.

Second, national self-determination is today a universal force that is lethal when resisted. While focusing on 1945, the Bush administration failed to see that these two ideas -- the U.N. and self-determination -- are actually Washington’s children, and the president has behaved like a deadbeat dad. When Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani demands self-determination, he borrows from Woodrow Wilson, and when we refuse to take him seriously, we act like the European imperialists who resisted Wilson at Versailles, insisting on the benevolence of their rule and the chaos of self-rule.

We are making a second historical mistake by delaying elections for fear that they could lead to ethnic violence, as occurred in the Balkans. The truth is, we are more likely to exacerbate ethnic tensions by impeding the legitimate demand for elections. The ayatollah is right about the importance of direct elections in Iraq. Instead of dismissing his proposal as impractical, we ought to work with him to ask what it would take and how long it would take to complete a registration list and organize a national election.

To understand how short-sighted and arrogant our approach is in Iraq, imagine if the ayatollah were to tell us how we should run our democracy. He might, for example, insist that the United States replace the Iowa caucuses with a real primary, or he could demand that we repeal the electoral college in favor of direct elections. We would protest his interference in our internal affairs, though he would be right again.

One of the virtues of democracy is that it contains a self-correcting mechanism. If a policy is failing, and a politician faces reelection, that person has a strong incentive to learn.

U.S. civilian administrator L. Paul Bremer III’s effort to persuade the U.N. to return to Iraq and assume responsibility before the U.S. presidential election suggests that the administration is learning. The U.N., however, faces a nearly impossible dilemma: how to establish its legitimacy and autonomy while being protected by U.S. forces. The U.N. mission would start on the right foot if it developed a formula for early direct elections -- a hard but not impossible task.

A U.N. mission could also save the U.S. from its next mistake, which is to impose an agreement to maintain U.S. forces in Iraq before transferring power. This poison pill could inject so much resentment that it could jeopardize both the new government and the remaining U.S. forces.

Instead, the U.N. should shift the debate to the country’s central democratic challenge, which is how to persuade the three dominant groups -- particularly the Shiites -- to invite U.S. forces under a U.N. umbrella to protect minority rights until a federal government is committed to this goal and able to defend it.

If the Bush administration is genuinely committed to democracy in the Middle East, then it needs to avoid selecting Iraq’s leaders and imposing its timetable. It needs to accept that it won’t like some leaders, but most important, it should concentrate on helping Iraqis resolve the issues that will make democracy possible.

Nothing is more important than giving Iraqis a stake in their own security and protecting the rights of the minorities.