This article on the wobbly state of Iraqi government makes for heartbreaking reading. Part of the challenge of bringing democracy to Iraq is creating a new mindset in a deeply suspicious, sometimes even paranoid, populace.
When I got back from Iraq a few years ago, Stanford’s Humanities program asked me to write about a then-current U.S. military proposal to monitor Iraqis using unmanned drones. In my response, “Conspiracies [sic] in the Desert,”, posted here, I try to explain how oppression, fear and anger create a mentality in many Iraqis that makes democratic cooperation all but impossible.
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How can you blame people for believing in conspiracy theories when so many things people would ordinarily have dismissed as loony have turned out to be real, or even understated?
Oppression, fear and anger to make democracy impossible? Sounds vaguely familiar.
Absent from your writing about Iraq is any acknowledgment of the fact that the United States had launched an unprovoked war of aggression against that country, under feigned pretenses, having previously backed its dictator. Putting the American perpetrators on public trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity might help mitigate the rather reasonable suspicions of the Iraqi people.
If your concern is in fact for the people of Iraq, you might want to express your support for such trials - even though, in fact precisely because, they are unlikely to ever take place in these United States. Otherwise, your tears merely resemble those of the proverbial crocodile.
Thus proving, I guess, that the inability to draw distinctions is a worldwide phenomenon.