NYT: There Is No Crash Course in Democracy (Iraq)

New York Times:


HILLA, Iraq — Americans have set out to teach Iraqis about democracy, and the way it is going says much about the differing cultures and histories and aspirations of the teachers and the students. It is another matter whether the American effort can succeed: Whether President Bush will be able to make Iraq a torch of democracy capable of lighting a fire among the autocracies and dictatorships of the Arab world, or will end up resembling Woodrow Wilson with his belief that the League of Nations would make the world safe for Jeffersonian values after World War I.

The venue for the "democracy training" classes run by American occupation authorities at Hilla, 80 miles south of Baghdad, could scarcely have been more apt for the transition the Americans hope to achieve before the deadline they have set for handing sovereignty back to an Iraqi provisional government next June. The Iraqis who take power then, according to the accelerated timetable approved by Mr. Bush last month, will lead the country as it adopts a constitution with American-style rights and moves to popular elections for a full-fledged new government by the end of 2005.

Overhanging everything here is the shadow of Saddam Hussein, his tyranny and mass murder. So it was apt that James Mayfield, the 70-year-old emeritus professor of the University of Utah who has led the classes, an expert in local government in the Middle East, should find himself addressing Iraqi tribal leaders and stern-faced Shiite clerics in a crypt-like room at the rear of a huge mosque that Mr. Hussein built to his own glory in the closing passage of his 24-year rule....


At Hilla, it was a tough sell, presaging the problems in forging anything like a consensus on the government that will emerge from the occupation. Tribal and religious leaders, after all, are among those who stand to lose the most if Iraq adopts the broader civic principles preached by Mr. Mayfield. The men who came to Hilla are, for the most part, schooled in the arts of subterfuge and maneuver that find no place in the democratic handbook. "We are chameleons," one of them boasted, after acknowledging that a year ago he could have been found at the mosque limning the praises of Mr. Hussein and celebrating his re-election as Iraq's president by a claimed 100 percent of the vote.


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/14/weekinreview/14burn.html?pagewanted=all&position=

...backed up by Saddam's former torturers from the secret police will be giving a quiz on Monday.