The Americans came to Iraq from another planet. They had missed the fact that this part of the world was living in a different historical period. They had the illusion that they could perform a deep surgical procedure on the region by removing Saddam Hussein's regime. The Iraqi politician smiles. Experience has shown that the Americans were wrong in interpreting the demands of people and their feelings. They believed that toppling Saddam Hussein would allow them to rebuild Iraq like they did Germany and Japan. They forgot about the different circumstances, the degree of economic and social development and the religious and cultural differences. In their faraway offices, the planners committed a naïve dream. They believed that democracy was the only dream that people in the region had, and that the mere fact of opening the Iraqi window would encourage Iranians and Arabs to take to the streets in emulation of the Iraqi model. They did not know that we were made up of different races, sects and confessions, dragging behind them a history of clashes and fear, and of attempts to eradicate and to stamp each other out; that our real identity, like our loyalties, was either smaller or greater than the area of the countries we inhabit. They did not understand that our real homelands were our sects and the regions that resemble us. I listened to officials, politicians and intellectuals who all agreed that the US role in Iraq had become secondary; that the invasion had succeeded at toppling Saddam Hussein's regime but had failed to build an attractive democratic model that would entice the region's inhabitants to engage in the project of democracy and change in order to live under pluralism and the rule of law; and then that the Americans were not a charity organization to begin with. Those visiting Iraq also hear bitter confessions from politicians and intellectuals. Talk of the US's failure sometimes aims at covering up the failure of the Iraqis themselves, their failure to seize the opportunity and to quickly meet in a state of institutions and under the rule of law. One politician places the Iraqis themselves on the list of those who have despoiled Iraq. He speaks of the horrors of violence on the streets, and of looting fortunes, ministries and institutions. This politician denounces the foreign parties that despoiled Iraq and continue to do so, but he considers the catastrophe to lie in the contribution of Iraqi forces to the long drawn-out carnival of despoliation. The future of Iraq is obscure. One hears such words from many. One also hears that Iraq used to be a player and has become a playground, used to be a country and has become an arena; that the dream of the return of a strong Iraq at the Eastern gates of the Arab World is no longer a dream that can be fulfilled; and that restoring the Iraqi side of the triangle that used to include it alongside Turkey and Iran will need a long time, aside from the fact that the return of a strong Iraq seems unattainable due to its structure and to the changes it has suffered. At the entrance of the Kurdistan Province stands the flag of the province alongside the Iraqi flag. It is a tremendous change in the lives both of the Kurdish people and of Iraq. For the first time in history, the Kurdish people sleep in the shadow of their own flag and of an authority they have elected. The Republic of Mahabad, which was proclaimed on Iranian soil in the 1940s, lasted only a few months. Iraq's Kurdistan Province is a different story. One cannot place the Kurdish leadership on the list of those who have failed. Tomorrow the Americans are leaving. They left Vietnam decades ago. The empire has the ability to bear failure and to overcome it. What is important is for Iraq's failure not to become consecrated and turn every electoral occasion into one fraught with the dangers of civil war and strife. The region cannot bear long drawn-out Iraqi failure.
