Iraq is a better place—despite latest bloodbath

I’m a cameraman, so facts have never been my strong suit. Vibe and mood are. And despite Sunday’s brutal bombing, the mood in Baghdad is worlds away from the dark days of 2006-2007, when ordinary Iraqis feared driving home, feared the militia checkpoints where so many had been taken out of their cars, tortured and killed.

Baghdad is much more tranquil now. If you are stopped on the streets, it is by the police—and the police is no longer just another Shia death squad. The Americans like to think that “the surge” is responsible for the decrease in violence. I disagree. Baghdad in 2006 was as close to Hobbes’s state of nature as any place I ever hope to visit. Civil war understates the hell that Iraq had become. Civil war suggests two sides, maybe three. Back then, every neighborhood, nearly every block had its own militia. Iraq, for 35 years ruled by the Ba’athist Leviathan, had descended very quickly into Hobbes’s “war of all against all.”



Hobbes tells us that the brutish consequences of anarchy impel us to band together, to abandon some large part of our freedom, to endow legitimacy to a strong and merciless state, which can be the only guarantor of safety and stability. I would suggest that the increasing respect accorded prime minister Nouri Maliki, to the Iraqi army, and even to the police, has more to do with Hobbes than to General Petraeus.

Back when Maliki came to power, most Iraqis saw him as a joke, a second rate man, a Dawa party functionary with no charisma, with little personal support. He was a pawn, I was told over and over, either of the Americans or of the Iranians, depending on to whom I was talking. He is a joke no longer. Even Sunnis seem to respect him. He is no wiser or more charismatic than he was in 2006 when he was installed in power because the Americans disapproved of his better-known Dawa colleague Ibrahim al-Jaafari. The difference: he is prime minister and, after years of horror, most Iraqis are desperate for the stability only a strong government can provide.

No group has claimed responsibility for Sunday's murderous attacks, which like those of 19th August, targeted government buildings, but most people here blame Sunni hardliners hoping to influence the upcoming elections. From the way traffic moved on the streets today, from the way Iraqis continued about their business, I don’t think they will succeed. I suspect the bombings are a sign of insurgent weakness, not of strength. I bet Maliki will win January’s general election, and win big.