The duality of Iraq
Less than a week before the Chinook went down near Fallujah, taking 16 American lives, I was given a ride in a Black Hawk over Baghdad. It was dusk, and the city stretched out beneath us. There was something Conradian about the view. We dominate the skies (when we can dodge the missiles), but the world beneath, the native city, is impenetrable to us. This is not Vietnam, not by a long shot, but it is complicated enough in its own way. We have taken America's truth to a difficult Arab land. A stranger who ventures into this encounter is confronted with the wildest swings of emotion. Reality shifts. In places, there is hope and a sense that the American mission may yet deliver this tormented country from its terrible history. But there is heartbreak, as well, and nagging doubts that the country may yet thwart the best of our intentions.
Venture into Kirkuk, and you find the success and benevolence that America's military campaign brought in its wake. At City Hall, a Kurdish mayor of great political dexterity-- the sort of man who could win an election in any American municipality--rolls out evidence of a decent civic life. The city is at work, there are local elections, steady work. From the mayor, and those who had come to do their government business, there was a sense, too, of gratitude. "We couldn't have achieved any of this," the mayor said, "without our American friends."
Not far from the mayor's office, a brilliant American officer, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, commander of the 4th Infantry Division, reflects on his work. There is energy in this command and in this part of Iraq: There are search-and-destroy missions; there is an unsentimental knowledge of the enemies who have come to Iraq to do mischief's work; there is a keen regard for the welfare of the Iraqis. The proverbial battle for the "hearts and minds" is no hopeless endeavor. The young officer who walks into Kirkuk is greeted warmly; even the soldier atop the armored humvee is careful to slow the hectic traffic around him without bullying.
A different reality unfolds in Baghdad. There is a sense of siege there. In the Saddam Hussein presidential palace (one of the 50 or so palaces he erected as monuments to his megalomania) that now serves as the headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the American civilian administrators seem hunkered down. In this palace of gold faucets and busted plumbing, there is the feel of earnestness, of proconsuls and foreign trustees trying to re-order a place of infinite complexity. For all its earnestness, however, there is also the feeling of being in a bubble. The work is noble and serious, but its ability to reshape the world outside the palace is an altogether uncertain matter. "We've been building, and they've been destroying; it is a race between us and them," said Emad Dhia, a highly educated Iraqi technocrat who heads the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council. Dhia was surrounded by a dozen of his colleagues--civil engineers, irrigation experts, educators eager to reclaim their country and wean it away from radicalism. These men and women were proud nationalists. Many returned after years of exile and professional success in distant lands. None want to see a hasty American withdrawal; all are keen to see us stay the course.
It is idle to debate now whether this was a war of choice or of necessity. We stand sentry here now, having decapitated the old regime and pledged to build a better one in its place. Our truth is being redeemed in the most painful of ways--by predominantly young men and women who carry the heaviest of burdens--so many of whom have now made the ultimate sacrifice. The question of whether a single national society exists in Iraq is yet to be answered. The insurgency in the Sunni triangle is the rebellion and the rear-guard action of a terrible breed of people eager to restore their own hegemony and the reign of terror that came with it. To a great, liberal country free of tribal and sectarian feuds now falls the grim task of quelling a rebellion of the darkest atavism. Imperial power has always carried with it heartbreak. In the shade of these palm trees of Mesopotamia, the best of our young people give the Iraqis their first exposure to an army that does not plunder and terrorize. May our sacrifices in that land not be in vain.
This story appears in the November 17, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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