Theocrats, autocrats want Iraq to fail

I am often asked why I don't just give up on Iraq and pronounce it a lost cause. It would certainly make my job (and marriage) easier.

What holds me back are scenes like the one related in last Sunday's New York Times story from Baghdad about the Iraqi parliament's vote to approve the country's new Cabinet. The story noted that during the Iraqi parliamentary session, the Sunni party leader Saleh Mutlaq, a former Baathist, stood up and started denouncing the decision by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to have parliament vote on the new Cabinet even though he hadn't yet filled the key security posts.

At that point, another Sunni politician, Mithal al-Alousi, told Mutlaq to sit down. "Iraqi blood is being spilled every day," al-Alousi said. It was time to move forward. When Mutlaq pressed on with his denunciations, al-Alousi "pulled him down into his chair," The Times reported. That was a gutsy move — live on Iraqi TV. Many Sunni insurgents may not like what al-Alousi did, but he did it anyway.

As long as I see Iraqis ready to take a stand like that, I think we have to stand with them. When we don't see Iraqis taking the risk to build a progressive Iraq, then it is indeed time to pack and go. That moment may come soon. It's hard to tell. I won't hesitate to say so — but not yet.

In such confusing times I find it useful to listen to someone steeped in the history of the Arab world, someone like the Egyptian sociologist and democracy campaigner Saad Eddin Ibrahim, who was visiting Washington with a human rights group from the Carter Center.

Ibrahim compares the U.S. invasion of Iraq to Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, which punched the first big hole through which modernity could seep into the Arab world. It was the key ruler of Egypt after the Napoleonic invasion, Muhammad Ali, who started sending students to Europe, introduced secular education and ushered in a mini-Arab renaissance that culminated with the first Egyptian parliament, elected in 1866.

What you are seeing in Iraq today is the "hard labor" of nation building in a country that has gone through almost 50 years of tyrannical rule, Ibrahim said. It is a naturally messy process, much messier than Eastern Europe's, with the outcome uncertain. "Everyone with a grievance for 50 years there is now breathing freely and wanting to act on their newfound freedom," he added.