New York Times, January 13, 2005
Ballots and Boycotts 
By Thomas L. Friedman

In trying to think through whether we should press ahead with elections
in Iraq or not, I have found it useful to go back and dig out my basic
rules for Middle East reporting, which I have developed and adapted over
25 years of writing from that region.

Rule 1 Never lead your story out of Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq with a
cease-fire; it will always be over by the time the next morning's paper
is out.

Rule 2 Never take a concession, except out of the mouth of the person
who is supposed to be doing the conceding. If I had a dime for every
time someone agreed to recognize Israel on behalf of Yasir Arafat,
I would be a wealthy man today.

Rule 3 The Israelis will always win, and the Palestinians will always
make sure that they never enjoy it. Everything else is just commentary.

Rule 4 In the Middle East, if you can't explain something with a
conspiracy theory, then don't try to explain it at all - people there
won't believe it.

Rule 5 In the Middle East, the extremists go all the way, and the
moderates tend to just go away - unless the coast is completely clear.

Rule 6 The most oft-used phrase of Mideast moderates is: "We were just
about to stand up to the bad guys when you stupid Americans did that
stupid thing. Had you stupid Americans not done that stupid thing,
we would have stood up, but now it's too late. It's all your fault for
being so stupid."

Rule 7 In Middle East politics there is rarely a happy medium. When one
side is weak, it will tell you, "How can I compromise?" And the minute
it becomes strong, it will tell you, "Why should I compromise?"

Rule 8 What people tell you in private in the Middle East is irrelevant.
All that matters is what they will defend in public in Arabic, in Hebrew
or in any other local language. Anything said in English doesn't count.

It is on the basis of these rules that I totally disagree with those who
argue that the Jan. 30 Iraqi elections should be postponed. Their main
argument is that an Iraqi election that ensconces the Shiite majority
in power, without any participation of the Sunni minority, will sow the
seeds of civil war.

That is probably true - but we are already in a civil war in Iraq. That
civil war was started by the Sunni Baathists, and their Islamist fascist
allies from around the region, the minute the U.S. toppled Saddam. And
they started that war not because they felt the Iraqi elections were
going to be rigged, but because they knew they weren't going to be rigged.

They started the war not to get their fair share of Iraqi power, but
in hopes of retaining their unfair share. Under Saddam, Iraq's Sunni
minority, with only 20 percent of the population, ruled everyone. These
fascist insurgents have never given politics a chance to work in Iraq
because they don't want it to work. That's why they have never issued
a list of demands. They don't want people to see what they are really
after, which is continued minority rule, Saddamism without Saddam. If
that was my politics, I'd be wearing a ski mask over my head, too.

The notion that delaying the elections for a few months would somehow
give time for the "Sunni moderates" to persuade the extremists to come
around is dead wrong - literally. Any delay would simply embolden the
guys with the guns to kill more Iraqi police officers and to intimidate
more Sunnis. It could only convince them that with just a little more
violence, they could scuttle the whole project of rebuilding Iraq.

There is only one thing that will enable the Sunni moderates in Iraq to
win the debate, and that is when the fascist insurgents are forced to
confront the fact that their tactics have not only failed to prevent the
elections, but have also dug the Sunnis of Iraq into an even deeper hole.

By boycotting the elections, not only will they lose their unfair share of
the old Iraq, they will also have failed to claim even their fair share
of the new Iraq. The moderate argument among the Sunnis can prevail only
when the tactics of their extremists have proved utterly bankrupt.

For all these reasons, the least bad option right now for the U.S. is
to forge ahead with the elections - unless the Iraqi Shiites ask for
a postponement - and focus all of America's energies not on appeasing
the fascist insurgents, but on moderating the Shiites and Kurds, who
are sure to dominate the voting.

Despite my seventh rule, we have a much greater chance of producing a
decent outcome in Iraq by appealing to the self-interest of the Kurds
and the Shiites to be magnanimous in victory, than we do of getting the
fascist insurgents to be magnanimous in defeat.