AN ELECTION TEST

Iraq’s elections scheduled for Jan. 30 are turning out to be far more than just the selection of a national assembly that will draft a constitution and prepare for the creation of a national government. Beyond that, they promise to be a test of President Bush’s entire Iraq policy: the 2003 invasion, the American occupation, and the long and continuing effort to pacify the country and create a democracy that will stand as a model for the rest of the Middle East.

As the election shapes up, with an increasingly ferocious and sophisticated insurgency committing daily atrocities, it is clear that the majority Shiites will win and many of the minority Sunnis will fail to vote, either out of fear of violence or through widespread boycott. Unless the victorious Shiites show unaccustomed moderation, Iraq is headed toward a Shiite-dominated government that will repress the Sunni minority. The Sunni guerrillas may be expected to step up the insurgency and try to overthrow the new government while it is still forming. (Another minority, the Kurds, are expected to vote and continue their efforts to achieve autonomy in the new Iraq.)

This gloomy prospect led Brent Scowcroft, one of the first President Bush’s chief advisers, to declare that the Iraqi election “won’t be a promising transformation, and it has great potential for deepening the conflict.” He went on, “we may be seeing incipient civil war at this time.” He also said that the continuing insurrection meant that it was time for a discussion of “whether we get out now.” When George W. Bush was asked whether he shared Mr. Scowcroft’s concern, The president said: “Quite the opposite.” He added: “I think the elections will be such an incredibly hopeful experience for the Iraqi people.”

Those are the two possible Jan. 30 outcomes: “deepening conflict” or “an incredibly hopeful experience.” The diametric clash between the two predictions epitomizes more than a decade of difference between the two Bushes over how to deal with the problem of Saddam Hussein. The father, confronted with the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, drove out Hussein’s forces but stopped short of taking Baghdad and overthrowing his regime. He and Mr. Scowcroft, who had been his national security adviser, wrote a joint column in 1998 in Time magazine on “Why We Didn’t Remove Saddam.” They wrote that it would have meant occupying Baghdad and, in effect, ruling Iraq. “Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

Even if Mr. Scowcroft’s fears of a civil war turn out to be right, that doesn’t necessarily mean that President Bush will cut back his goals and begin a pullout. His decision to invade Iraq grew only partly out of the advice from a group of neoconservatives. It resulted also from a deeply personal conviction of a mission to spread freedom, as his Inaugural address described yesterday. Such a view knows of no sacrifice too great for others to make.

Participation in the Jan. 30 election will demonstrate whether Iraqis also believe this.