January 20, 2009

Today Barack Obama became the 44th president of the United States. I watched the coverage of the inauguration on CNN with friends here in Erbil, and seeing over a million people spread across the National Mall who had come to witness an important day in history made me feel happy and hopeful for the future.

The inauguration of Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States of America, January 20, 2009. (photo: AP, Susan Walsh)

I received many words of congratulations from my Iraqi friends, whom I’ve lived with now for more than a year. In that time they have gotten to know me fairly well, and they see me as a person who appreciates humanitarian values more than political agendas. They recognized through media coverage filtering through from the West that Americans perceive their new president to be more of a humanitarian perhaps than his predecessor, and I think this was the reason many people congratulated me. Of course their own opinion of Obama and of American politics may be different….

Back in late October, as the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain grew to a crescendo, we held a mini U.S. presidential election here in Erbil. I put together an official-looking ballot based on the absentee ballot I received from my local elections office in California, and gave all the Iraqis I know here a chance to vote for the next U.S. president. I told them that I would cast my official vote in California for whoever they chose, even if my personal opinion was different. It was only meant to be a tiny gesture in the spirit of democracy.

Onlookers cheer as Barack Obama takes the Oath of Office at the nation's capital. (photo: REUTERS, Mark Blinch)

If you think about it, the American president wields power over the whole world, yet only American citizens are allowed to vote for him or her. That’s like saying the White House shapes policies that affect everyone in the United States, but only Texas is allowed to vote. Of course this is a loose analogy, but through the power of international economics, diplomacy, and military force, it is very true that the lives of billions of common people around the world are directly affected in some way by what the U.S. government does.

The way my life compares with the lives of my Iraqi friends is a good example: No matter who wins the White House, Democrat or Republican, I will always have access to education, medicine, and employment opportunities back home. But depending on what a small group of elite politicians in Washington decides U.S. policy will be in Iraq, my friends here may not be able to find a good job, they may not be able to receive medical care they need, and they may have to leave homes their families have lived in for decades because of the threat of violence (which they’ve already done. This is why they live in Erbil now instead of Baghdad).

Even though this is the reality of U.S. politics here, it is only the foreigner with U.S. citizenship who gets to send in an absentee ballot. So the mini election was a way for Iraqis to have a real (if mostly symbolic) voice in a political event that will greatly affect their lives. The word for “vote” in Arabic is sot, which means “voice.”

A large Iraqi clan gathers for an all-day picnic near the village of Shaqlawa in northern Iraq.

And it was never really clear which candidate they would choose. Republican policies are not unpopular in northern Iraq. Iraqi Kurds have benefited in some ways from U.S. involvement since the 1990’s and particularly since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. As for ethnic Christians there is more ambiguity. Iraqi Christians have been witnessing a mass exodus since 2004 as their communities continue to flee religiously-based violence in the country. On one hand they blame clumsy Bush policies for the nightmare they are living through now, but at the same time they see an aggressive U.S. stance in Iraq as something that may save them from further persecution by extremist groups.

Even though I provided an anonymous ballot for the mini-election, my friends and colleagues—-mostly Christians and Kurds-—were happy to be quite vocal about who they voted for. The loudest advocates were Christians who voted for McCain. They rejected the idea of a President Obama outright with a casual, dismissive wave of the hand, explaining simply, “because he’s a Muslim.” (Nevermind a clarification of the facts or my own aversion to racism.) As the ballots were cast, these voluntary “exit polls” suggested that McCain was going to run away with the election. I braced myself for the reality that I might actually have to cast my vote for John McCain.

“Election day” arrived and two of my English students helped me count the votes. As it turned out there were just as many Obama supporters as McCain supporters; maybe they were just a little less vocal. In an election-day drama that played out as if a screenwriter had planned it that way, McCain and Obama were exactly tied as one of my students reached for the last folded piece of paper in the stack. He opened it and looked up at us, unable to hide a twinge of disappointment in his face. “Obama,” he said.

Students in Ankawa (a Christian neighborhood in the otherwise Kurdish city of Erbil in norhtern Iraq) exchange departing wishes at the end of the school semester.

After we began sharing news of the results, many people revealed reasons why they had voted for Obama. “We need something different,” they said. “Yes, we are afraid of what will happen when the U.S. pulls its troops out. But we have been at this for thousands of years. We’ll find our way.”

Today, the inauguration of President Obama is a hopeful day. But as many taxi drivers here have told me, elections don’t matter and neither do presidents. “What really matters,” they say, as Iraq prepares for its own national elections next week, “Are fair, responsible policies that actually help people live a safe and dignified life.” This is my wish for all the world’s citizens, whether they are called Americans, Iraqis, or anything else.

Thanks for reading!