Chicken Little, Journalist

Knowing that journalists' lack of a sense of history often prevents them from assessing current events accurately, it's a good idea to balance curiosity with skepticism whenever one reads or listens to them. David Brooks understands this (at least when he's at his best), as demonstrated in his Saturday Times column. Hyperventilation on the war in Iraq is tres chic, from dinosaurs (Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd) to dingbats (Maureen Dowd), and it's particularly easy to be misled when we're dealing with a culture that seems even more foreign and exotic than it is. As Brooks says:

"The Shiite violence is being fomented by Moktada al-Sadr, a lowlife hoodlum from an august family. The ruthless and hyperpoliticized Sadr has spent the past year trying to marginalize established religious figures, like Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who come from a more quietist tradition and who believe in the separation of government and clergy. Sadr and his fellow putschists have been spectacularly unsuccessful in winning popular support. The vast majority of Iraqis do not want an Iranian-style dictatorship. Most see Sadr as a young, hotheaded murderer who terrorizes people wherever he goes. He and his band have taken this opportunity to make a desperate bid for power, before democratic elections reveal the meagerness of their following."

While there's clearly room to criticize some elements of the administration's Iraqi policy, most notably its need to explain what's a stake there more fully to the American people, only a journalism school graduate would expect the place to be as serene as a Sunbelt suburb. Americans, especially those too young to recall WWII, have a poor understanding of what a dictatorship is, and how it works. It isn't one man with a gun; it's a couple hundred thousand conspirators with RPGs, money, and a desperate need to prevent a legitimate government from forming. Dictators rule through corruption, fear, and brutality. They destroy civil society -- Burke's "little platoons" -- in order to maintain power.

The Iraqis are traumatized and, no doubt, disoriented, but they're not crazy. Polls show that most of them are glad we're there and don't long for a return of Saddam, or even Saddam-lite. A dangerous minority has formed private militias (which civil society and stable states cannot allow) who are now attacking coalition troops and civilians. But they don't speak for most Iraqis, and they won't win if we don't lose our nerve.