As elections in Iraq near, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi admits there will be areas too dangerous for voting. “Certainly there are some pockets that will not participate in the election,” he said. “We don’t think it will be widespread.”
This is about as optimistic as it gets these days in Iraq. A more realistic assessment is that voting will be sporadic due to mass confusion and fear. A United Nations memo obtained by Newsday says that major logistical problems still exist; for example, ballots still need to be printed and flown into the country, the names of thousands of candidates are still being entered into computer databases, and there have been difficulties hiring enough poll workers due to threats of violence.
One such threat was made yesterday by a rebel group that issued a statement promising to deploy “highly trained” snipers to disrupt the voting process.
Meanwhile, violence increases by the day. A suicide car bomber killed seven policemen in Tikrit, and gunmen killed eight people in a minibus south of Baghdad on Tuesday, according to Reuters. Insurgents have become bolder and have increased the explosive power of their bombs. Already in the New Year, over 30 Americans have been killed in Iraq, according to CNN. As columnist Bob Herbert writes: “Nightmares don’t last this long, so the death and destruction must be real.”
The taking of innocent lives in Iraq is not limited to the insurgents. U.S. soldiers killed at least five people, including Iraqi policemen and civilians, in Baghdad on Sunday. The mistake came less than 24 hours after the U.S. dropped a bomb on the wrong home, killing another five civilians. Countless mistakes like these make winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people impossible at this point.
Not that the administration seems to care about hearts and minds. Newsweek reports that the Pentagon is debating whether to use the so-called “Salvadorian option” in Iraq. As the article explains, the option refers to “a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported ‘nationalist’ forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers.” This won’t come back to bite us in the ass. Nah.
Meanwhile, violence in Iraq is creating violence here at home. Marine Andres Raya, who served seven months in Iraq, committed “suicide by cop” rather than returning to the military. Raya killed one cop and critically injured another in Ceres, a small town near San Francisco, before being killed. Raya’s mother said, “He came back different.”
As more young men and women, our friends and peers, return from battle physically and emotionally scarred, we will see more and more of these kinds of tragic events in our communities. Whether the elections are successful or not, whether we leave Iraq in one year or in 10, we will be dealing with the repercussions of this war for the rest of our lives.
“Nightmares don’t last this long…”

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