Ignorance

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IGNORANCE

By RALPH PETERS

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August 18, 2003 -- WE'LL bag Saddam. We'll continue to break down the diehard support for the old regime. And we'll do our best to give the people of Iraq a chance at greater freedom than they've ever known.

But even when the last Ba'athist bullies are rounded up and foreign terrorists tire of achieving martyrdom at our hands, one mighty enemy will remain in Iraq: Ignorance.

It's a foe we cannot defeat with the finest of armies.

Addicted as we are to the buzz of daily developments, it's hard to stand back and recognize that the most powerful long-term threat to success in Iraq doesn't come from gunmen, but from the inability of many Iraqis to interpret events accurately.

We take for granted the ability to separate fact from fiction, to identify that which looks, feels and smells reasonably like the truth. Yet the long Western struggle to view the world objectively is culturally unique. Especially in the Arab world, myth, comforting lies and cynical rumors trump facts that seem undeniable to us.

It makes things tough for our soldiers, who come from a Joe Friday, "just the facts, ma'am" civilization, yet must bring order to an Alice In Wonderland culture in which nothing is quite what it seems and things just grow "curiouser and curiouser."

Even in relatively "Western" countries, such as Russia or Greece, I've been astonished at the patently lunatic conspiracy theories to which even elites subscribe. Indeed, one of the many politically incorrect questions that needs to be asked is simply this: Is there a direct correlation between our appetite for accurate data and the success of American civilization? The answer seems obvious, but don't try raising that question at Columbia.

Iraq has no tradition of rational inquiry. On the contrary, regimes predating Saddam's by centuries ruled by relying on fear, corrupted faith and mumbo-jumbo. Despite its secular, pseudo-scientific trappings, the Ba-athist regime disdained objective analysis. The truth didn't set anyone free. It earned them a cell or a bullet.

The people of Iraq and their neighbors never acquired the rigorous mental skills necessary to separate appealing delusions from concrete reality. The flight into fantasy serves as a psychological refuge: If Arabs live in failure and poverty, it's because someone else conspired against them, whether Americans, Israelis or the Mongols.

And, sometimes, the rumors in an information-starved society such as Iraq's under Saddam were far more accurate than the line broadcast by the government. The people have been conditioned to skepticism.

Thus, when Paul Bremer claims in good faith that we hope to return Iraq to its citizens as swiftly as possible, Iraqis hear the words as they have always heard official pronouncements: with cynicism and suspicion.

Another aspect of this deficient realism worked against us in the first days of the occupation and still troubles us today: Iraqis were disappointed that gold-plated manna failed to fall from the heavens immediately after the arrival of our troops. Their sense of America's wealth and capabilities had been formed by fabulous legends, by Hollywood films and by expectations exaggerated in the re-telling.

It seemed impossible to Iraqis that we couldn't bring electricity, clean water and winning lottery tickets to every one of them overnight. When services lagged or the lights failed to come on, it had to be a conspiracy. America, the all-powerful, could do whatever it wanted. Power shortages meant that America wanted to keep Iraq poor.

Aggravating this elementary distrust and lack of objectivity is the universal, still unexplained human tendency to find comfort in believing the worst.

If anything proves that we are not inherently rational beings, it's our hunger for bad news, for someone to blame, for believing evil of our neighbors. Rational beings would prefer to interpret events hopefully. Yet even Americans delight in hearing about a neighborhood scandal or believing that "something's going on" behind the scenes of the political stage (there is - a vast conspiracy of mediocrity).

Iraqi claims that we plan to convert them to Christianity or Judaism, that we scheme to corrupt their women or violate their holy shrines or simply that we intend to steal their oil, mirror the beliefs of our own ancestors that cities were stricken with plague because Jews poisoned the wells, that earthquakes meant the gods had indigestion or that Union soldiers would force the fair daughters of the Confederacy to marry liberated slaves.

We've come a long way, although our judgment remains far from perfect. Now we're asking Iraqis to make centuries of progress in a few years.

The Iraqis are frightened - not by our troops, but by change itself, by the collapse of the order they knew, no matter how vile its practices. Their world has been shattered and they truly do not know what we intend or what the future holds.

Turning on the electricity is a minor challenge compared to turning on the light of reason.

We need to recognize the routine difficulties facing our soldiers each day - not just the occasional rocket-propelled grenade, but the cultural divide between men and women born to freedom and facts, and those whose heritage is of subordination, evasion and lies.

Indeed, Iraqis not only don't trust us - they don't trust each other. The Middle East is the "Through the Looking-glass" version of our society. In the United States, we expect that the surface reflects what lies beneath. In the Arab world, surfaces are constructed to deceive, to deflect, to shield. The first story is never the real story. Promises are empty. And conspiracy theories overpower facts.

The situation in Iraq remains encouraging - a vast improvement over the recent past - but we need to acknowledge the society's demoralization. We are pioneering more than Arab democracy. We're attempting to spread a fact-based civilization, and those we mean to help may prove frustratingly obstinate. Humankind loves absolving lies.

We defeated Saddam. The danger now is that Iraqis will defeat themselves with fantasies.

Ralph Peters is a retired Army officer and the author of "Beyond Terror: Strategy in a Changing World."