DEMOCRACY IN IRAQ IS A FAIRY TALE

Sometimes you read something and you reread and suddenly, it is "ah hah." I recently had this with an article in the New York Times Magazine. It seems of late that all my stuff comes from there. Why? Well, not so but they do in depth articles for one thing and the editors obviously don’t mind giving a writer a few pages, not the usual 500 words or less. This piece, The Last Battle (The Fight Among Iraq's Shiites) by Michael Gordon, is probably the best thing I've read about Iraq: succinct and puts us where we are NOW after all the millions of dollars and lives given.

The article had to do with a team called Phoenix, not after another infamous Phoenix, I don’t think. (The CIA engineered project for assassinating enemy combatants in Vietnam). The Phoenix Team had to do with these 3 young captains that General Petraeus had recruited to work with Sunnis and Shiites to create a greater sense of security, provide some jobs through a neighborhood watch program, and in general, be his eyes and ears in a region of the country that seemed the most conducive to employing General Petraeus' counter insurgency philosophy.

I was very impressed that the good general would be this open, creative and very protective of these three young soldiers who were not career types, although true believers. There has to be an amazing "back story" to this project. Here are three soldiers: a female Lieutenant, later Captain; another, having done several tours in Iraq; a Harvard graduate--and, an enlisted guy who could have been an officer but through some idealistic view wanted to be an enlisted man, later became a Sergeant. Their connections to Petraeus, to each other, to the Marines and ultimately to this story is almost too much to believe. I don't, for a moment, doubt the veracity of the story but there has to be more to how it all came to be. Well, for one thing, it makes for a good story. The flip side of the coin is that what they attempted when fleshed out to the possibilities is equally amazing. I simply will accept it at face value. It is a story that needs to be read.

The article is too long and involved to fully convey the gist of it, even if I wanted too. Several lessons to learn from the message: the military should not be put in a position to make promises or offer incentives that they cannot deliver. Reminds me so much of Vietnam. We made all these promises to the people and in the final analysis, didn’t deliver.

But, more than anything, what The Last Battle pointed out was the overwhelming complexity that we are in the middle of in Iraq: tribes, sheiks, political alliances, fanatical believers, you name it. It is simply an impossible venue for democracy. Here's a thought: the best we can hope for is that a kinder Saddam and surely less crazy, might emerge. The Last Battle reinforces that any idea of a democracy as we know it is a will of the wisp fairy tale.