The votes are still being counted in Iraq, said National Review Online in an editorial, but it's not too early to call the provincial elections a success. Sunni and Shiite secular parties fared better than their religious counterparts, and the balloting took place in "an environment of calm that would have been unimaginable two years ago," before the surge.
That's one way to look at it, said Leila Fadel in the Kansas City Star, but turnout was the lowest in the new Iraq's short history, despite the calm. Many Iraqis chalked up voter apathy to "disenchantment with a democracy that, so far, has brought them very little."
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