Remember all the belly-aching and hand-wringing about Iraq’s Sunnis being left out, desperate, disenfranchised, hopeless, blah, blah, blah? It all started sounding a lot like the dogmatic apologizing for the Palestinians. Well the Sunnis are participating in Iraq’s democratic process, and will certainly hold significant power. The Shiite parties will have reach out to form a coalition, as they cannot “rule without partners.”

According to today’s Washington Post:

Shiite religious parties fell short of winning outright control of parliament in Iraq’s Dec. 15 national elections, compelling them to seek alliances with at least one other faction if they are to form a coalition government, official election results confirmed Friday.

The results released by the national election commission represented no significant surprises, other than confirming the strength of the showing by the minority Sunni Arabs in a vote that will seat Iraq’s first full-term parliament since the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

So now Sunni participation is not important or, not a “significant surprise?” Just the facts, huh? The Post continues:

Commission official Safwat Rasheed said the United Iraqi Alliance, a coalition of Shiite religious parties, captured 128 of the 275 seats, down from the 146 it won in January 2005 balloting. It needed 182 to rule without partners. A Sunni ticket, the Iraqi Accordance Front, won 44 seats. Another Sunni coalition headed by Saleh Mutlaq finished with 11 seats, Rasheed said. A few other Sunnis won seats on other tickets.

That will give the Sunni Arabs a bigger voice in the legislature than they had in the outgoing assembly, which included only 17 from the community forming the backbone of the insurgency. The December elections saw the first sweeping participation of Sunni voters, after threats of violence and boycott calls quelled Sunni turnout in the January elections.

Sunni participation will put further pressure on the “disenfranchised” cry-babies. As Iraqis put together a coalition government, hopefully they will then clamp down on the country’s homicidal Islamist terrorists (”insurgents”), who have killed about 30,000 innocents, mostly Shiite.

Only ruling together — working things out together in parliament, the press, or in court — will Iraqis bring true civilization to their homeland. Democracy must prevail — but that will mean learning that sometimes democracies have to take tough measures. The peaceful majority will have to tell the Sunni/Wahabi terrorists that the people have made a choice: stop your murdering, lay down your arms, be killed, or end up in prison for life. Period.

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