Iraq election Dextered by Roger Kimball

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Feb 14, 2005 08:18 AM

Iraq election Dextered

by Roger Kimball

So, how did the Iraq election go? Depends whom you ask. Most of us, presented with the fact of an honest election at which 60 percent of those eligible voted, would regard it as a wild success. Remember, we’re talking about a country that, for the last several decades, had been a hellish tyranny ruled by a tribe of murderous thugs. That changed courtesy the 101st Airborne, the U.S. Marines, and some their buddies. Here’s how the folks at Power Line presented it:

Iraqi Election Results...
...are about as expected. Turnout was a terrific 60%. The Shiite-backed slate (which also includes Sunnis and others) led with 48% of the vote; the Kurdish list got 26%, and interim Prime Minister Allawi’s party received 14%. Seats in the new Assembly will be more or less proportional to the vote; somewhat remarkably, I think, only twelve coalitions will be represented in the Assembly.
Behind the scenes politicking will now go on as the Assembly prepares to write a new Constitution. Great. Is it perfect? No. But for Iraqis, it’s a wonderful introduction to the normal world after thirty years of living in a nightmare.

But then there is Dexter Filkins, The New York Times’s poetic Sad Sack in Baghdad. I like to check in with Dexter from time to time, to keep tabs on his purple-prosed evocations of the horror of war, his mock-documentary explanations of why the U.S. is bound to lose, has to lose, must lose in order to fulfill the script he inherited from some Vietnam-era mentor. They are almost as informative--though they are not quite so comical--as the dispatches that Seymour Hersh and his battalion of "former intelligence officers" treat us to. Even the Associated Press describes the Iraq election as a "landmark" event. For Dexter and his controllers at the Times, however, its parlous times in Ridgemont High:

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 13 - The razor-thin margin apparently captured by the Shiite alliance here in election results announced Sunday seems almost certain to enshrine a weak government that will be unable to push through sweeping changes, like granting Islam a central role in the new Iraqi state.
The verdict handed down by Iraqi voters in the Jan. 30 election appeared to be a divided one, with the Shiite political alliance, backed by the clerical leadership in Najaf, opposed in nearly equal measure by an array of mostly secular minority parties.
According to Iraqi leaders here, the fractured mandate almost certainly heralds a long round of negotiating, in which the Shiite alliance will have to strike deals with parties run by the Kurds and others, most of which are secular and broadly opposed to an enhanced role for Islam or an overbearing Shiite government.

Dexter, Dexter: the only thing "razor-thin" here is the patina of credibility maintained by your reports from the front of the press pool. The New York Times is not the only media outlet conspicuously praying for chaos in Iraq, but with Dexter Filkins on the scene, it is one of the most preposterous.