Iraq: An Easter Reflection

As we celebrated our Easter (or Passover for some,) here in the states, another deadly weekend unfolded in Iraq. A truck bomb south of Baghdad killed 18, and at least 47 Iraqis were killed or found dead…today. 10 US soldiers died this weekend and to top it all off, a dire announcement from Muqtada-al-Sadr;

"You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don't walk alongside the occupiers, because they are your archenemy,"

I ask you now, how, pray, can a democracy form, function and stabilize in a country where this man is listened to more than the Prime Minister? Imagine a situation where people take orders from Fred Phelps and not the President, Congress or Governors. That is what we have in Iraq; a population who wishes for a theocracy, not a democracy.

I am reminded of when this war started. I was a college student, working as Assistant News Director of my college radio station. I was in charge of producing the then 15 minute afternoon news show. We gathered most of our news using the Associated Press. We had an AP computer on site. Each news story on the AP is named by a slug, or a short one or two word label. For example, a story having to do with President Bush responded to Hurricane Katrina might be labeled BUSH-KATRINA, or one about Britney Spears in rehab may be SPEARS-REHAB. From the day we invaded Iraq in 2003 until the my last day at WRHU in May, 2006, straight until I went back to be a special on-air guest on Election Night last year, the AP computer had about 15 stories a day with the slug IRAQ. (IRAQ-BOMBING, IRAQ-PROTESTS, IRAQ-ISRAEL, etc.) I told everyone around me in 2003 that we would be seeing Iraq plastered all over this computer until our kids are pulling copy from it. Sadly, I'm beginning to think that may be true. What else is there to accomplish there? We got rid of Saddam and the country never had weapons of mass destruction, so essentially we've accomplished what we went there to achieve.

Now, the argument is, we have to fight terrorism there; terrorists who showed up in the country to TAKE ADVANTAGE of the power vacuum that was created by overthrowing Saddam Hussein. Terrorism exists there because of the failed bungled war policy of this administration, despite what Dick Cheney may say. All I really want to see first is for President Bush to ADMIT he made the situation worse than it was before.

Iraq is never going to be a Jeffersonian Democracy, not when people like al-Sadr are calling the shots. It is time for us to let the Iraqi people decide what government works for them. If they want to kill each other, let them kill each other. Let Iran waste their time intervening in a civil war. Maybe they'll spend so much of their resources funding the Shiite militias; they won't have time or money to build a nuke.

The Iraqis may not create a government we hoped for them, but I think it was naïve for us to believe that a secular democracy like ours would ever form in a country that sits in a region where piety trumps freedom and human rights. We are paying for our naivety and lack of knowledge of the outside world.

In the meantime, while you read this, IRAQ popped up at the AP computer at WRHU in Hempstead, New York about four times.