Iraqi Election Success? Not So Fast

Iraq’s Jan. 31 provincial elections, the first since 2005, may seem to have gone rather smoothly and been accompanied only by limited violence, but it’s still too early to breathe a sigh of relief. Every election has losers, and losers don’t always accept defeat graciously. In mature Western democracies, losers usually assess what went wrong, go back to the drawing board, and work on their appeals to voters. In today’s Iraq, they all too often resort to car bombs and bullets.