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Ralph Peters is a regular columnist with the New
York Post.
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 Faith,
Blood & Bombs
In Iraq…
[Ralph
Peters] 3/2/06
I flew over
the streets of Baghdad on Sunday. The calm made a striking
contrast to the media hysteria. No mosques burned. No demonstrations
seethed. The closest thing I saw to violence was a children's
soccer game played in a suburb.
Baghdad isn't
Candyland, of course. We skimmed the city at 300 feet — combat
altitude — with the Blackhawk's guns up.
But it sure
wasn't civil war. For now, at least, Abu Musad al-Zarqawi and
his blood-cult terrorists haven't succeeded in pitting Sunni
against Shia.
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Ralph
Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of 19 books,
as well as of hundreds of essays and articles, written both
under his own name and as Owen Parry. He is a frequent columnist
for the New York Post and other publications. [go to Peters Index] |
Our effort
to help Iraqis build a rule-of-law democracy may yet fail.
But it remains a better bet that Iraq will become the most
equitably governed major Arab state and that a democracy, however
imperfect, will stand where a monstrous regime fell.
Last week,
the terrorists scored a temporary win by bombing the Golden
Mosque in Samarra. Retaliatory attacks pocked Iraq's urban
landscapes, providing striking TV images. Starved for headlines,
the global media declared a civil war.
But the Iraqis
didn't sign up. Yes, there was "unrest." And a daytime
curfew was imposed. But after an initial spate of bickering,
Iraq's key leaders came together — as they could not
have done under Saddam — to calm the situation.
More deaths
and dangers lie ahead. Poor decisions made three years ago
in Washington mean that we travel Baghdad's streets well-armed
today. We never had enough troops at the bottom or sufficient
integrity at the top. Now no honest voice would claim that
America "owns" Iraq.
But that's
less and less relevant. Ownership rightfully belongs to the
Iraqis, and we've always believed that. Slowly but steadily,
the better souls are taking responsibility for their own country.
Setbacks frustrate us — but frustrate Iraqis even more.
Worried that
we'll abandon them (a fear based on recent American history),
many Iraqis sit on the fence in public. But they do not support
the terrorists or insurgents. They want better lives, not more
bombs.
What's most
notable about the sectarian disturbances of the past week is
what didn't happen: Extremists on both sides had a
bash in the streets, but the general population didn't turn
out. Iraqi security forces responded more effectively than
they could have done even six months ago. Our own troops intervened,
but at a lower pitch than in the past.
To the chagrin
of the press, the country's leaders continue to muddle through.
That may not sound inspiring, but it should. Well-intentioned
men and women from each of the country's major constituencies
are trying to find a formula for a new Iraq that works.
It's a tough
job, even a miserable one, exposing courageous leaders to mortal
danger. But they haven't given up. From Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani,
the dominant Shia religious voice, to wary Sunni Arabs and
watchful Kurds, the unanimous position on the past week's events
was that Zarqawi and his thugs could not be permitted to prevail.
And the terrorists didn't prevail.
A tactical victory looks set to turn into a strategic defeat.
By a huge majority, all Iraqis were appalled by the mosque
attacks, whether launched by Sunni-Arab terrorists or Shia
street thugs (in the end, even Moqtada al-Sadr, a foul little
bully, realized that he had more to gain from opposing the
strife than abetting it).
The bottom
line is that Iraqi Muslims of every sect were appalled by the
terrorist attacks upon faith's symbols. While foreign journalists
may long for civil war, Iraqis don't.
The situation
in Iraq is far less rosy than our pigheaded ideologues promised.
But, in this imperfect world, even the best results are flawed.
Given the complexity of Iraq's human composition and its gore-soaked
history, we should be astonished that the country's moving
forward at all.
Stand back
and take in a wide perspective: Iraq isn't a natural country,
but a sewn-together Frankenstein's monster of a state. Its
major population groups have tormented each other in turn.
The Sunni-Shia wound to Islam has festered for 13 centuries,
while ethnic differences led to campaigns of genocide.
Under Saddam,
the country suffered a level of torment that even those of
us who supported his removal by any means failed to understand.
We knew the rough numbers of those killed in his murder campaigns
and wars, and had some sense of the reach of his secret police
(on Sunday afternoon I stood on the roof of their old headquarters,
which offers a sweeping view of Baghdad). But none of us grasped
how deeply the moral rot and sense of fear — the infantilizing
of society — had gone.
Ridding the
country of Saddam and his regime was an admirable moral act.
Only a heartless fanatic would question it. But the removal
of the dominant force in Iraq was bound to lead to turmoil
as a crippled social (and political and moral) environment
sought to find a new equilibrium.
Two powerful
foreign elements complicated the process: The well-intentioned
Coalition forces, and the nihilistic foreign terrorists. We
want Iraq to rush forward; the terrorists seek to force Iraq
back to a mythical, impossible past. The stress on the social
fabric can be paralyzing.
Yet, in their
way, the Iraqis have more confidence than we do. Collectively
and individually, they're struggling to find their place in
a new order whose shape has yet to be settled. The country's
future remains undecided — as it will for years to come.
Here in Baghdad,
I stand by my position of three years past: We won't know the
true results of our engagement in Iraq for at least a decade.
And the Iraqis, not us, will decide the outcome.
Meanwhile,
Iraq is moving forward. The process may be stronger than our
disappointed initial expectations allow us to see. The real
story of the tumult of the past week is that it didn't spread
and didn't completely derail the painful process of forming
a new government. Zarqawi didn't win.
If we're
frustrated, the terrorists must be far more disappointed. What
you really saw over the past several days was passive resistance
to fanaticism. Despite old hatreds, the people spoke by refusing
to succumb to calls for violence. Iraq could still break into
bits, but we just witnessed an unsung moral victory. -one-
Ralph
Peters is in Iraq on assignment for The New York Post.
Ralph Peters'
latest book is New
Glory: Expanding America's Global Supremacy
This
piece first appeared in the New York Post
copyright 2006 - NY Post
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