The United States has an obligation to support the small-“d” democrats who will brave a savaged landscape to participate in Iraq’s elections this weekend.

Nobody knows how many will risk life and limb to vote for a new government. A steady stream of attacks has targeted election officials, polling places and security forces. The insurgents intend to instill fear in Iraqis, to keep them from participating in the governance of their own country, to make the price for a vote too high.

Much of the country remains out of control. Along the 10-mile road that connects Baghdad to the airport and its accompanying U.S. military base, suicide attacks are so common the route has become a near free-fire zone. Large swaths of the country, and even the capital city, are too dangerous for normal, everyday activities.

John Burns, the Baghdad bureau chief for The New York Times, starkly describes the city in a report published Jan. 27: “On the bright spring day in April 2003 when Marines helped topple Saddam Hussein’s statue in Firdos Square, Baghdad, more than any other place in Iraq, was the place American commanders hoped to make a showcase for the benefits the invasion would bring.

“Instead, daily life here has become a deadly lottery, a place so fraught with danger that one senior American military officer acknowledged at a briefing last month that nowhere in the area assigned to his troops could be considered safe.”

Speaking to Burns, a person identified as Dr. Naqib said he would not vote, would not take the chance. “Every day, when you leave your home, you don’t know what will happen – bombs, bullets, kidnapping,” Naqib told Burns “You ask me about hope – there is no hope. On ordinary days, I cannot even allow my children to play in the garden. To them, a garden is something they only see through windows.”

As sad and terrible as the circumstances are, though, absolute security became unlikely when U.S. troop strength was decided. There just aren’t enough soldiers on the ground to stop insurgents determined to use any means to delegitimize the voting. It’s one of the central mistakes that has haunted the occupation from the beginning.

Voters will select a new 275-member National Assembly, which will then name a new president and write a constitution. The constitution must then be ratified by two-thirds, which means it must pass muster with all of Iraq’s ethnic groups.

This weekend’s elections will not end the violence. It could ignite a full-fledged civil war, if that hasn’t already happened. But it is a step forward.

The sooner Iraqis feel a sense of ownership over their own government and affairs, the sooner the insurgency will begin to lose its potency. That’s not to say, however, that the U.S. commitment to the country will shrink once votes are counted. The opposite, in fact, is true.

For the democrats – who risk the bombs, bullets and kidnappings – to participate in the elections, the United States must provide a pillar of support. Our responsibilities do not end this weekend. If anything, they are will grow as the new National Assembly works to build a representative government from the remains of a fractured and distrustful tyrannical state.