You don’t have the imagination to perceive a better life for people nor the strength of will to carry through long term with such projects. Whether this is true for you or not, is irrelevant to Iraq for it will be Iraqis and Americans, both military and civilian, that will decide as a group and as a team what happens. After the enemy gets their votes, of course. Thus this means that you can be as pessimistic as you want or Lee as optimistic as he wants, but it is the reality people create that matters. Illusion and propaganda helps, but even the best propaganda cannot reattach someone’s head to their shoulders and breath life back into the eyes.

Problems are problems. If MacArthur and American ancestors sat around and did nothing but write what you have described here in words, there would have been no solution to problems. That is certainly true just as it is true that problems will always arise regardless of what you are or where you are. It doesn’t matter whether Iraq has a tribal problem or not, since if they didn’t have a tribal problem they would have our problems. We have other problems, because problems don’t go away and neither does war. You trade one set of serious and potentially fatal problems for another set of less serious but more annoying problems. That’s the game of life.

Those problems would flare up because those people don’t know any better way to live their lives. What they have have worked for them, so why fix something that isn’t broken, would be their view. You and I cannot use the same excuse, unless we admit to being as parochial as the Iraqi tribal members.

I also doubt that Sunnis and Shia will get along.

The Founding Fathers knew 3 times to be true. They doubted that blacks and whites would ever get along as one or even two societies, barring special individuals. They knew that Native Americans would not be able to get along with white settlers. And they knew that American loyalists would not get along with Crown Loyalists.

By all means, doubt that Shia and Sunni will get along. Such things will become obsolete eventually, because such beliefs are meaningless.

Of course it has maximum relevancy. Whether you believe freedom can be achieved or whether it is an infinite quest predetermines your position. There is nothing to talk about when you are a nihilist, Elrond. And a nihilist is someone that believes that because human progress has not been achieved in the past or the present or the near future, that it is now meaningless to even try.

If you believe there is some kind of set goal that you can achieve and then say “we’re done”, you’re on the wrong historical scale. If you keep using it, of course you aren’t going to get anywhere concerning Iraq’s status.

However, in some Shiite areas in the south, Taliban-like strictures are on the rise. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0918/p11s01-wome.html) This signals an increase in religious fundamentalism from the Saddam era. I don’t think you would call this a “free society.” More moderate religious views may eventually prevail, but I wouldn’t count on this happening for at least another generation.

I also doubt that Sunnis and Shia will get along.

I also doubt that tribes in a non-oil region of Iraq will allow other tribes to have control of the oil without a fight.

I also think that nations surrounding Iraq will fight proxy wars in Iraq using the tribes or religious sects there.

I think that no matter how long we stay in Iraq with our current troop levels, these problems I have stated will remain, and will flare up when we leave.

I think my post is clear. The most significant sign of progress is this relative success by some tribes (working with the U.S. military) in bringing peace to their regions. The Iraqi government was not able to do this; nor was the Iraqi military or the U.S. military acting alone. So, given that this much power lies in the tribes, it seems that Iraq may exist more naturally as a collection of tribes with a weak central government. If this is the case, then this is contradictory to the Neocon dream of making Iraq a secular democracy, if that is the Neocon dream. Remember, before our invasion, different Neocons had different dreams. Some wanted to install Chalabi and his cohorts as the replacements for Saddam’s government. Some (David Wurmswer among them) said that the Jordanian monarchy would take control of Iraq. And some (William Kristol, Robert Kagan) said that if we liberated the Iraqi Shia from Saddam’s tyranny, then they would start a democracy that would serve as an example to the rest of the Middle East.