So why did things look so promising on the eve we left Iraq?

The pajandrums of politics, sociology, history, I.R., etc. can drown us in words. But maybe these few words get to the nut:

*The Americans were the social glue*

Besides dispensing money and influence, the American presence oiled the social fabric, like this: X, a Sunni, and Y, a Shiite, won’t talk. But Z, an American, talks to both of them. X and Y, for their own reasons, want to please Z. Maybe a little bit of general good will seeps into it. So they talk, for a while.

Some forms of tribalism are so arbitrary, like inner city gangs, or extended families, that in a generation of favorable time, they can fade, so that a nation’s spirit can be born. But in Iraq, tribalism is sustained by elaborate religious traditions, which, history has shown, can endure  beyond comprehension.

In the bad times of Saddam Hussein, the two groups socially intermingled,  though power was concentrated in the Sunni elite. But Hussein’s methods are not acceptable to us.

We seem perpetually inspired by General Douglas MacArthur’s success in forging the modern state of Japan. If used to inspire, the situations must be carefully compared.