IRAQIS FOR BUSH

Lawrence F. Kaplan has a great piece in the Wall St. Journal about the mood in Iraq as we prepare to go to the polls here in the U.S. It appears that many Iraqis are hoping for a Bush win.

As far as Iraqi elites are concerned, President Bush brought democracy to a land that knew only dictatorship. From Sen. Kerry, however, they hear no commitment to build a liberal state or, for that matter, any state. What they hear instead is a presidential aspirant who complains about "opening firehouses in Baghdad and closing them down in the United States of America," even as his campaign aides dismiss Iraq's prime minister as an American "puppet."
Not surprisingly, surveys by the Iraqi Center for Research and Strategic Studies find that, whereas Mr. Bush garners the most support in the Kurdish north and from Iraq's well-educated urban elites, Mr. Kerry draws his strongest support from what the Center's Sadoun al-Dulame calls Iraq's "hottest places"--hotbeds of resistance to the U.S. A poll taken earlier this month in Baghdad, for example, finds that while President Bush would win a higher tally in New Baghdad's Christian precincts, Sen. Kerry carries Sadr City hands down.

Follow the link to read the whole column. Kaplan points out that most Iraqis don't care who wins since they are more concerned with day-to-day survival. But there is a justifiable degree of fear that if we reject George W. Bush, how long will it take before we reject his policies?