Minds and more

Here's the thing about revolution: as romantic as the popularized images of Che Guevara, Chairman Mao or Vladimir Lenin might be, if the government that's installed is as despotic as the government that fell, then there has been no revolution at all. It's merely a civil war and mindless chaos.\nSuch is the case in Iraq.\nCurrently, the most powerful party in the transitional government is the Shiite-controlled Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. According to the Washington Post ("Shiite Urges U.S. to Give Iraqis Leeway In Rebel Fight," Nov. 27), the Sunni Arab minority live in constant fear of both the party and its leader, Abdul Aziz Hakim, who has been linked to numerous torture facilities uncovered by American forces in recent weeks. We're talking real-life, honest-to-gosh recreations of the same torture chambers Saddam Hussein was using just a few short years ago. \nThese facilities operate under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior, an entity created by the more or less make-believe Transitional National Assembly to run the day-to-day bureaucracy of domestic affairs. The problem is that there are no national parks to manage, and no money to build hospitals, roads or schools, so the day-to-day activities of the Interior Ministry involve terrorizing the citizens by secret police. Now where do you think they got an idea like that?\nMaybe the only thing worse than an ineffective puppet government installed by an imperialistic Western power is the sense that two years and hundreds of cruise missiles later, all that work has come to naught. You can lead a horse to water, but if you cut off its legs it's not going anywhere. In other words, it might be possible to lead a country to democracy but not if you've razed it to the ground.\nSo where did we go wrong? What's the proper way to conduct a revolution? Maybe we ought to look at a couple successful revolutions in history: Cuba and America. In both these cases there was a concerted effort by the people: a strong leader organized the resistance, revolutionary ideas were printed and disseminated and the reasons for war were clear. In Iraq, however, none of these things exist. There are no George Washingtons or Che Guevaras; there is no Declaration of Independence or Federalist Papers; no one's even sure if the Americans are there to find WMDs, hunt down Osama bin Laden, take all the oil or put an end to religious fanaticism.\nThe point is, we're fighting the same war over and over again — the Bay of Pigs, Korea and, dare I say, Vietnam -- and they all turn out the same way. Whether we withdraw our troops tomorrow or 10 years from now, we've already failed. Not because of faulty intelligence or the president's incompetence (although much could be said on the subject); not because our troops don't have body armor or that our Humvees can't survive road-side bombs. We failed -- and I say "we" because, like it or not, the voters are the reason America is at war -- because the principles of successful revolution were put aside in favor of Hollywood-style theatrics and self-glorifying politicians.