Does anyone here think the violence in Iraq will be reduced if the election is postponed due to violence?

A half-assed election, similar to the U.S. election of 1864 is better than no election at all.

At approaching 22 months, this must be the shortest military quagmire on record.

Meanwhile, back in 1864...

Guerillas and "bushwhackers" did stalk the countryside, particularly in southern Illinois. Armed insurgents, often inflamed by the ruthless persecution of southern sympathizers, took union men from their homes, whipped them, and in some occasions, shot them. In the last years of the war this mass retaliation terrorized central and southern Illinois. Gangs of rebel sympathizers from Missouri, opportunistic horse thieves and other criminals, and deserters from both armies joined with Illinois guerillas to threaten entire towns.

In March of 1864 a mass of over one thousand copperhead raiders menaced the towns of Mattoon and Charleston in east central Illinois. Fighting with soldiers on furlough and active troops dispatched to subdue them, the renegades dispersed. Authorities placed the county under martial law and made many arrests.

A secret society known as the Knights of the Golden Circle organized southern sympathizers into covert action. Many Republicans believed that the Knights aimed to foment a revolt in order to break the northwestern states away from the Union. When federal and state authorities investigated the group, they concluded that its activities did not constitute an armed opposition to the government. Conspiracy trials convicted several alleged ringleaders of espionage and treason, but found others not guilty.

Republicans met the Knights' of the Golden Circle's threat through the organization of their own secret society, known as the Union League. The League provided loyalists anxious about the Union's progress in battle and the loyalty of their neighbors with an opportunity to contribute to the war effort. Members took up the tasks of sniffing out potential copperhead outrages and espionage.

By the summer of 1864 even the Republican leader Thurlow Weed of New York considered Lincoln's re-election "an impossibility…. The people are wild for peace." But while Grant's armies bogged down in Virginia and McClellan's presidential candidacy picked up speed, Union troops secured a hard-won victory at Atlanta. The hub of commerce in the Deep South had fallen, providing General William T. Sherman's armies with an unobstructed path to the Confederate rear in the Carolinas. The Richmond Examiner complained that "the disaster at Atlanta" came just in time to "save the party of Lincoln from irretrievable ruin."

Where disgruntled Republicans had once considered new candidates to replace Lincoln, they now embraced him as a victorious leader. Democrats attacked Lincoln as "Abe the Widowmaker" and "Abraham Africanus," the proponent of miscegenation. But Union victory had ruined the southern Democrats' campaign. In November of 1864 American voters returned Abraham Lincoln to office by a half-million vote majority.