Fighting the Big One

But I totally disagree that this is a sign that everything is going wrong in Iraq. The truth is exactly the opposite.

We are attracting all these opponents to Iraq because they understand this war is The Big One. They don8217;t believe their own propaganda. They know this is not a war for oil. They know this is a war over ideas and values and governance. They know this war is about Western powers, helped by the United Nations, coming into the heart of their world to promote more decent, open, tolerant, women-friendly, pluralistic governments by starting with Iraq 8212; a country that contains all the main strands of the region: Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

You8217;d think from listening to America8217;s European and Arab critics that we8217;d upset some bucolic native culture and natural harmony in Iraq, as if the Baath Party were some colourful local tribe out of National Geographic. Alas, our opponents in Iraq, and their fellow travelers, know otherwise. They know they represent various forms of clan and gang rule, and various forms of religious and secular totalitarianism 8212; from Talibanism to Baathism. And they know that they need external enemies to thrive and justify imposing their demented visions.

In short, America8217;s opponents know just what8217;s at stake in the postwar struggle for Iraq, which is why they flock there: Beat America8217;s ideas in Iraq and you beat them out of the whole region; lose to America there, lose everywhere.

One of the most interesting conversations I had in Baghdad was with Muhammed A. al-Da8217;mi, a literature professor at Baghdad University and author of Arabian Mirrors and Western Soothsayers. He has spent a lifetime studying the interactions between East and West. 8216;8216;Cultures can8217;t be closed on themselves for long without paying a price,8217;8217; he explained. 8216;8216;But ours has been a vestigial and closed culture for many years now. The West needed us in the past and now we need it. This is the circle of history. Essentially what you are seeing here is a cultural collision. I am optimistic insofar as I believe that my country 8212; and I am a pan-Arab nationalist 8212; is going to benefit from this encounter with the more advanced society, and we are going pay at the same time. Your experience in Iraq is going to create two reactions: one is hypersensitivity, led by the Islamists, and the other is welcoming, led by the secularists. But you have to understand that what you are doing is a penetration of one culture into another. If you succeed here, Iraq could change the habits and customs of the people in the whole area.8217;8217;

So, the terrorists get it. Iraqi liberals get it. The Bush team talks as if it gets it, but it doesn8217;t act like it. The Bush team tells us, rightly, that this nation-building project is the equivalent of Germany in 1945, and yet, so far, it has approached the postwar in Iraq as if it8217;s Grenada in 1982.

We may fail, but not because we have attracted terrorists who understand what8217;s at stake in Iraq. We may fail because of the utter incompetence with which the Pentagon leadership has handled the postwar. We don8217;t even have enough translators there, let alone MPs, and the media network we8217;ve set up there to talk to Iraqis is so bad we8217;d be better off buying ads on al-Jazeera. We may fail because the Bush team thinks it can fight The Big One in the Middle East 8212; while cutting taxes at home, shrinking the US Army, changing the tax code to encourage Americans to buy gas-guzzling cars that make us more dependent on Mideast oil and by gratuitously alienating allies.

We may fail because to win The Big One, we need an American public, and allies, ready to pay any price and bear any burden, but we have a president unable or unwilling to summon either.

By arrangement with The New York Times