The Foreign Service Journal, March 2004

The bad prognostications may indeed come to pass: Iraq’s future administrations may find themselves overwhelmed by corruption, region- al separatism and sectarian strife. If that happens, given the reality of the development process and current international circumstances, we couldn’t have done anything about it in the first place. But whatever hap- pens, Iraqis will be better off than they were before. Nothing can ever be as bad as Saddam. Pessimists might ponder the “Glorious 13th of July.” On that day the new Governing Council took its first decision: it declared April 9, the day of Baghdad’s fall to coalition forces, a national holiday. That night, I wrote to Jerry Bremer: “What a marvelously brave, anomalous, self- respecting, confident gesture by an Arab government! Imagine, an Arab nation celebrating the defeat of its former regime by an Anglo-American- Australian coalition! Have years of suffering and exile made the new government of Iraq less sensitive, less allergic to confronting the baloney that has passed for political consen- sus in the Arab world for more than a half-century? After the sticks and stones of the mass graves at Hilleh, what should the Governing Council care about harsh words from their Arab ‘brethren’? “From now on the Iraqis have the moral high ground. No other Arabs ‘will have their num- ber.’ To me, for a day at least, it is as if the sun has broken through the cloud bank of reflexive, defensive BS that blan- kets the political and intellectual life of the Arab world.” The Impossible Dream? Even partial success by a future Iraqi government, F O C U S 36 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 0 4 Despite the external threats, a 14-hour or more work day, and a 6.5-day workweek, we knew we had an opportunity to try to do something important.