DEAD SOULS:

There Is No Crash Course in Democracy (JOHN F. BURNS, December 14, 2003, NY Times)

Finding ways to mitigate the effects of handing Iraq over to a Shiite-dominated government that might mistreat the Sunnis or simply dominate them is at the heart of the debate among the Americans and Britons who are working on a schedule for a constitution and elections.

At its core, this involves keeping promises made before the invasion that tyrannical centralism would be replaced by a federal system, with a bill of rights protecting minorities and other features to shape a working political relationship among the rival Sunnis, Shiites and Christians, as between Arabs, Kurds and Assyrians.

Nothing like this has ever been tried in Iraq before, and nothing like it, at least on more than paper, has been seen elsewhere in the Arab world. Still, the Americans are betting that Mr. Hussein's ultimate legacy will be, in effect, that past nightmares will draw Iraqis on a path of entrenched individual and group rights, of a firewall separation between church and state, of independence for the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and above all, of tolerance for minorities. In other words, the core of a civil society as understood in the West. [...]

Something closer to a bottom line emerged when they were asked if it wasn't presumptuous to teach basic political principles to the citizens of a land long hailed as the cradle of civilization. Several men said Mr. Mayfield had said nothing new to Iraqis, because it was all written in the Koran anyway. Saddam Hussein, like Iraqi leaders for centuries, they said, was an aberration from Koranic principles, but that didn't mean Islam was at fault, only that it hadn't been properly applied since the Caliphs ruled in Baghdad nearly 1,000 years ago.

To travelers in the Muslim world, this sealed argument, attractive as it is, is unconvincing. The democratic possibilities in the Koran are most intensively studied at Islamic studies centers in Europe and the United States, not in the many Arab states where the propagation of democratic ideas can lead swiftly to prison. If Iraq can prove the exception, against all odds, the American venture here may yet be the landmark its backers have hoped it will be.

One thing seems curious about the contempt of the Left and Buchanaeering Right towards this experiment in Iraq: are their hearts not quickened just a bit by the nobility of the attempt to spread democracy to this benighted region, even if it is ultimately more than a little quixotic?

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 13, 2003 4:24 PM