The time has come for us to get out of Iraq

Instead the allies defied almost all expert opinion in pursuing the highly ambitious goal of endowing Iraq with an elected democratic government. By now, however, it should be obvious that no significant population group in Iraq wants the democracy that the Bush administration is striving so hard to establish.

The best-educated Sunnis and Christians of the Baghdadi elite may admire democracy in theory, but fiercely oppose it in practice because they do not want to ruled by the Shi’ite majority, and still less by the emerging Kurdish-Shi’ite alliance. The Shi’ites, who constitute at least 55 per cent of the country’s population, include such world-class sophisticates as Ahmad Chalabi, the most dynamic figure in the new Iraq Governing Council. But the majority of Shi’ites are illiterate or nearly so, and the only leaders they recognise are their imams and ayatollahs.

Some of these figures are loud political activists while others strive to stay out of politics, but all insist that Iraq must be governed by Islamic law, not by the will of an elected assembly that might violate religion as they see it, by legislating equal rights for women, freedom of speech, or the right to drink alcohol, among other sins. In other words, the most likely leaders of a majority of Iraqis reject as a matter of firm religious principle the very idea of inalienable human rights, the fundamental premise of any worthwhile democracy. In fact the Shi’ite clerics of Basra are already using their new freedom to deprive others of theirs, forcing the closure of liquor stores, a trade of the local Christian minority.

As for the Kurds, our good allies who account for some 15 per cent of Iraq’s population, they certainly know more than most about the evils of dictatorship, but their own governance is much more tribal than democratic. That indeed is why the Kurdish enclave is divided into two distinct and occasionally warring mini-states led by the Barazani and Talabani clans, whose rival chiefs pose as the leaders of political parties, but would never compete against each other in free elections.

The smaller minorities, Turcomans, Assyrians, and Yazidis, some 5 per cent of Iraq’s population in all, share the concerns of the Baghdadi elite: they do not want to be governed by the most likely winners of any free election, Shi’ite clerics who, from their point of view, vary only in the degree of their fanaticism .

Finally, there are the Sunnis of central and northern Iraq who, even if utterly uneducated, enjoyed privileged access to relatively well-paid and mostly very undemanding jobs under Saddam Hussein. Coming from a still partly tribal culture of modest accomplishments and unlimited pride, few know anything at all about democracy except that it will not reserve 90 per cent of easy government jobs for less than 20 per cent of the population – and besides, many of those jobs have disappeared with the dissolution of the Republican Guard forces, security services and salaried militias.

It would be an astonishing achievement of cultural transformation if a functioning Iraqi democracy could be established in a mere 30 years, or indeed 60. But the Bush administration cannot contemplate decades of colonial government, and is therefore pushing for the formation of some kind of elected government in two or three years, after a constitution is written and approved by referendum, so that elections can be held.

But the immediate problem is that even that perilously accelerated time-table is much too slow for many Iraqis – and for the US Army, which is heading for a veritable collapse in re-enlistments among the troops serving in Iraq. It is not that the troops are frightened by the sporadic attacks against them – total casualties remain too small for that – but most are utterly disgusted by the futility of their duties. They are repairing schools in the furnace heat of the Mesopotamian summer while able-bodied Iraqis nearby are idly watching, if not jeering. They are clearing playgrounds for children who have been taught to throw stones at them. They are guarding hospitals from looters while being cursed even by the visitors of the patients they are protecting, one of whom recently justified the killing of three soldiers on the grounds that they were wearing shorts off-duty, exposing their knees. The officers who now govern towns and entire districts are constantly besieged by local leaders and imams demanding more of everything, from electricity to well-paid jobs, but who resist any suggestion that they themselves could act, for example by getting their followers to clean up the garbage-strewn streets. They prefer to keep them listening to interminable speeches and sermons.

It is thus not just the successive delays in rotating forces home that are ruining morale, but the mission impossible of turning Iraqis into democrats in short order. Now that hopes of recruiting large numbers of peacekeepers from other countries have faded, the time has come to prepare the next-best exit strategy. If equipped with an adequate security force, there is no reason why the new Iraqi Governing Council cannot be left to rule on its own – and such a force could be formed quickly out of existing Kurdish and Shi’ite militias rounded off with police forces raised in Sunni areas as well. The continued survival of Saddam Hussein is no obstacle to a rapid hand-over of power. He has no loyal followers in Iraq but for the Sunni tribals, who can longer impose their will on most Iraqis.

The perils of a rapid exit are many, but the only alternative is a prolonged occupation that offers no greater guarantees of success, at far greater cost.

Edward Luttwak is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.