The Foreign Service Journal, March 2004

moreover, could be of very great con- sequence for the region and the world. Iraq’s new leaders may have learned something from the harsh schooling of the past half-century. These leaders, furthermore, and especially the Shiite laymen on the Governing Council, and their spiritu- al mentors in Najaf, are more intel- lectually open to the modern world than are their Arab Sunni counter- parts almost anywhere else. Neither the Shiite leaders nor the Kurds are contaminated by that distemper toward the West that is so common among active Muslim religious elements in Riyadh, Cairo, London, Paris, and almost everywhere else. No Crusaders filled Hilleh’s mass graves. In my conversations, the topic of Israel almost never arose; Palestinians were dismissed as toadies of Saddam. Fellow Arabists will understand the impact such an omission of the Arab world’s favorite “compulsory figures” had on me. Nor do I see any prospect of Iraq lurching toward some sort of Khomeini-like theocracy. The Iran- ian experiment is discredited among most Iraqi Shiites, and those who for nine years fought against Iran under Saddam won’t change sides now. Accordingly, one can hope that even a halfway stable and moderately democratic Iraq will eventually establish cooperative relations with a more democratic Iran. And then to hope further, might those two states, together with Israel and Turkey, shift for the better the strategic, military and intellectual climate of the Middle East, and help other Arabs and Muslims to rejoin not the Western, but the modern world? F O C U S M A R C H 2 0 0 4 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 37 The CPA’s work proves that if good people are given first-class leadership, an important mission and sufficient resources, morale will take care of itself.