FRIEDMAN: Postcards From Iraq

Of all the images I saw on a short visit to Iraq last week, two stand out in my mind. One was a display that the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, in the Sunni Triangle, prepared for the visiting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers. It was a table covered with defused roadside bombs made from cellphones wired to explosives. You just call the phone's number when a U.S. vehicle goes by and the whole thing explodes. The table was full of every color and variety of cellphone-bomb you could imagine. I thought to myself that if there is a duty-free electronics store at the gates of hell, this is what the display counter looks like.

The other scene was a briefing by Lt. Gen. John Sattler, the Marine commander in Falluja. General Sattler was explaining how well the Marines, Army, Air Force and Navy Seabees had worked together in Falluja as a combined task force. As General Sattler was speaking, I looked around at the assembled soldiers in the room. It was a Noah's Ark of Americans: African-Americans and whites, Hispanic Americans and Asians, and men and women I am sure of every faith. The fact that we can take for granted the trust among so many different ethnic groups, united by the idea of America - and that the biggest rivalry between our Army and Navy is a football game - is the miracle of America. That miracle, and its importance, hits you in the face in Iraq when someone tells you that the "new" Iraqi police unit in a village near Falluja is staffed by one Iraqi tribe and the "new" National Guard unit is staffed by another tribe and they are constantly clashing.

What unites these two scenes is the obvious fact, which still bears repeating, that we are trying to plant the seeds of decent, consensual government in some very harsh soil. We are not doing nation building in Iraq. That presumes that there was already a coherent nation there and all that is needed is a little time and security for it to be rebuilt. We are actually doing nation creating. We are trying to host the first attempt in the modern Arab world for the people of an Arab country to, on their own, forge a social contract with one another. Despite all the mistakes made, that is an incredibly noble thing. But for Iraqis to produce such a social contract, such a constitution, requires a minimum of tolerance and respect for majority rights and minority rights - and neither of those is the cultural norm here. They are not in the drinking water.

I have been to this play before, though. Fifteen years ago I wrote a book about the Arab-Israel conflict, including a chapter on the Marines in Beirut in 1982. I called that chapter "Betty Crocker in Dante's Inferno." It was my way of expressing the contrast between the truly pure intentions of those Marines trying to refashion Lebanon into a more decent, democratic polity and the harsh soil that was Lebanon of that day.

Cultures can change, though. But it takes time. And, be advised, it is going to take years to produce a decent outcome in Iraq. But every time I think this can't work, I come across something that suggests, who knows, maybe this time the play will end differently. The headlines last week were all about Falluja. But maybe the most important story in Iraq was the fact that while Falluja was exploding, 106 Iraqi parties and individuals registered to run in the January election. And maybe the second most important story is the relatively quiet way in which Iraqis, and the Arab world, accepted the U.S. invasion of Falluja. The insurgents there had murdered hundreds of Iraqi Muslims in recent months, and, I think, they lost a lot of sympathy from the Arab street. (But if we don't get the economy going on the Iraqi street, what the rest of the Arab world thinks will be of no help.)

Readers regularly ask me when I will throw in the towel on Iraq. I will be guided by the U.S. Army and Marine grunts on the ground. They see Iraq close up. Most of those you talk to are so uncynical - so convinced that we are doing good and doing right, even though they too are unsure it will work. When a majority of those grunts tell us that they are no longer willing to risk their lives to go out and fix the sewers in Sadr City or teach democracy at a local school, then you can stick a fork in this one. But so far, we ain't there yet. The troops are still pretty positive.

So let's thank God for what's in our drinking water, hope that maybe some of it washes over Iraq, and pay attention to the grunts. They'll tell us if it's time to go or stay.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
© 2004 The New York Times