Democracy still the best bet in Baghdad

Ralph Peters:

I FLEW over the streets of this city on Sunday. The calm made a striking contrast to the media hysteria. No mosques burned. No demonstrations seethed. The closest thing I saw to violence was a children's soccer game played in a suburb.

Baghdad isn't Candyland, of course. We skimmed the city at 300 feet — combat altitude — with the Blackhawk's guns up.

But it sure wasn't civil war. For now, at least, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his blood-cult terrorists haven't succeeded in pitting Sunni against Shia.

Our effort to help Iraqis build a rule-of-law democracy may yet fail. But it remains a better bet that Iraq will become the most equitably governed major Arab state and that a democracy, however imperfect, will stand where a monstrous regime fell.

Last week, the terrorists scored a temporary win by bombing the Golden Mosque in Samarra. Retaliatory attacks pocked Iraq's urban landscapes, providing striking TV images. Starved for headlines, the global media declared a civil war.

But the Iraqis didn't sign up. Yes, there was "unrest." And a daytime curfew was imposed. But after an initial spate of bickering, Iraq's key leaders came together — as they could not have done under Saddam — to calm the situation.

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Worried that we'll abandon them (a fear based on recent American history), many Iraqis sit on the fence in public. But they do not support the terrorists or insurgents. They want better lives, not more bombs.

What's most notable about the sectarian disturbances of the past week is what didn't happen: Extremists on both sides had a bash in the streets, but the general population didn't turn out. Iraqi security forces responded more effectively than they could have done even six months ago. Our own troops intervened, but at a lower pitch than in the past.

To the chagrin of the press, the country's leaders continue to muddle through. That may not sound inspiring, but it should. Well-intentioned men and women from each of the country's major constituencies are trying to find a formula for a new Iraq that works.

It's a tough job, even a miserable one, exposing courageous leaders to mortal danger. But they haven't given up. From Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the dominant Shia religious voice, to wary Sunni Arabs and watchful Kurds, the unanimous position on the past week's events was that Zarqawi and his thugs could not be permitted to prevail.

And the terrorists didn't prevail. A tactical victory looks set to turn into a strategic defeat. By a huge majority, all Iraqis were appalled by the mosque attacks, whether launched by Sunni-Arab terrorists or Shia street thugs (in the end, even Moqtada al-Sadr, a foul little bully, realized that he had more to gain from opposing the strife than abetting it).

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There is more.