The Foreign Service Journal, September 2011

Slouching Toward the Arab Spring But as Joyce makes clear, Gerty has her own interests and dreams. Iraq may yet benefit tremendously from our sometimes overwhelming focus on her, if she is able, for example, with our help, to resist Iranian influence, defin- itively defeat and delegitimize al-Qaida here and establish a reasonably sturdy democratic political culture. Those developments would likely reverberate positively in the region and could help weaken the stranglehold that radical Islamist ideology has had on certain aspects of thought and po- litical culture in this region over the past several decades. The recent pro- democracy developments associated with the Arab Spring —whose myriad sources include a Mesopotamian Spring — may, with spooky serendip- ity, provide a more positive sociopolit- ical regional environment for Iraq’s fragile democratic institutions and help facilitate its reintegration into the Arab world. There are no guarantees, of course; in the end, something much slighter, just the geopolitical equivalent of a glimpse at Gerty’s bloomers, may be all this project ever amounts to. Unlike the well-known conclusion of Ulysses , we don’t know how our project in Iraq will turn out. Like the old Orson Welles’ movie, “Touch of Evil,” there may be a re-release in 50 years with a new ending, as critics, an- alysts and historians continue to argue about which version was originally in- tended and about who is responsible for messing up the original production. It is true that we have marched through Iraq as Ulysses did through Greek myth, conquering enemies, es- caping snares and temptations, navi- gating treacherous ethno-sectarian whirlpools and slaying terrorist mon- sters. But as Joyce understood, times have changed since Greek myth in- formed our sense of the heroic. At the conclusion of Ulysses (spoiler alert!), Leopold returns home after all his day’s mighty (OK, puny) adventures and crawls into bed with his wife, Molly. For a variety of reasons, he does not exactly receive a triumphal wel- come as he returns to his modern-day Penelope. In the real world of diplomacy and the aftermath of war (unlike in the world of the reader, seduced by a good novel), the hero rarely gets to settle down with his Penelope and walk off into the sunset. We are more likely to be disappointed suitors in Iraq, which will bestow some of her affection on us without ever fully reciprocating the mad rush of both well-intentioned pol- icy affection and reckless geopolitical passion that we have showered on her. In that respect, we are like Leopold Bloom, who returns home and finds himself stuck in an ambiguous, am- bivalent relationship. James Joyce de- picts him lying at the foot of the marital bed amid the traces in the bed sheets of the lover Molly has entertained in his absence, even as she decides whether to get up and head down to the kitchen to make Leopold his re- quested breakfast. In a world of diplomacy and of coolly calculated, often conflicting in- terests and disappointed ambitions that might have to pass for a suitable outcome — even if it falls short of a hero’s welcome home. 34 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 Two other novels, Melville’s Moby Dick and Faulkner’s Absalom , Absalom , also come to mind in reflecting on our presence in Iraq.