“Watching a steady stream of Iraqis wave as they walked to the polling center, and then smile and hold up their ink stained thumbs as they returned. The entire area swimmed with motion as Iraqis came from kilometers away to cast their vote. As the sun reached its burning apex one of the Iraqi soldiers ran over with a grave look on his face. He spilled a torrent of words, urgently motioning for me to follow him. I took a small detachment to the outer perimeter, a wall of concrete barriers a couple hundred meters from the polling site and was met with an anxious group of Iraqi soldiers. As I walked over there I expected I would have to listen to pleas for additional ice, or some other creature comfort. What they had to say took me by surprise, and I felt embarrassed at my callous guessing game. The reason they had called me over was to express concerns that one of the election officials was trying to sway the voters in the polling center. As they laid out their case their eyes burned with passion and their voices trembled with emotion. It was only then, seeing these soldiers aflame with a desire to have a free and fair election, that I truly understood how committed these men were to their fledgling democracy. I had one of the Iraqi policeman collect up the election supervisor and the poll worker in question and as they arrived the soldiers let loose a heated verbal salvo. I motioned for them to stop for a moment, and as they lapsed into silence I explained to the supervisor how critical it was to remain impartial. The poll worker lowered his head in an obvious expression of shame, and the supervisor promised to keep a close eye on his staff. They walked back to the election building, and the soldiers seemed convinced that my impromptu civics lesson would cow the passionate poll worker into a semblance of impartiality.
As the afternoon heat flared I started seeing groups walk away with the water bottles we had left with the soldiers, and I walked over to the perimeter to see if everything was alright. They told me that they had plenty of water, and that they wanted to share it with the people who were walking great distances in order to vote. All of these soldiers were Shia, and all of the voters were Sunni, but that didn’t matter to them. For on this day sectarian concerns faded away like the morning mist, and all the Iraqi soldiers could see was Iraqi citizens in need of a cool drink. For the second time in the day I was impressed and slightly humbled by these soldiers I had been so concerned with the prior evening.
The afternoon was no different from the morning, and voters continued to make their way to the polling site in spite of the oppressive heat. In our small position soldiers took turns on the heavy weapons scanning for threat that never materialized. And then it was over.
The election officials packed the ballots into their small sedan and piled into it like it was a circus clown car. As they left the site we pulled out of our overwatch positions and reassembled on the election site. As I stepped out of my HMMWV I noticed an Iraqi soldier carefully cutting down the election banner. I snapped a picture of him holding up the banner and then watched him carefully folded the banner. Once he had done so he walked over and placed it in my hands saying “take, take – thank you for you protecting Iraq democracy”. His tongue stuttered on some of the unfamiliar consonants, but his message carried so much weight I almost staggered backwards. His words washed away all the miseries we had suffered over the last few days, replacing it with a deep sense of pride at what my men had helped accomplish.”
Read it all and feel proud for what these brave men and women are accomplishing, for they are accomplishing great things. Despite the hand wringing and negative statements made by the “loyal” opposition and the anti-American left, it appears that democracy does want to flourish in Iraq.
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