BEIRUT — I’d like to pick a wee bone with Tom Fried­man. Well, actu­ally not him specif­i­cally, but really the Amer­i­can ten­dency to empha­size the actions of indi­vid­u­als over larger, coun­ter­vail­ing forces in pol­i­tics. Exhibit A: Friedman’s opin­ion that the action of a brave Iraqi in Par­lia­ment is a good rea­son to keep at it in Iraq (Times’ Select, sorry):

I am often asked why I don’t just give up on Iraq and pro­nounce it a lost cause. It would cer­tainly make my job (and mar­riage) eas­ier.
What holds me back are scenes like the one related in last Sunday’s Times story from Bagh­dad about the Iraqi Parliament’s vote to approve the country’s new cab­i­net. Our story noted that dur­ing the Iraqi par­lia­men­tary ses­sion, the Sunni party leader Saleh Mut­laq, a for­mer Baathist, stood up and started denounc­ing the deci­sion by Prime Min­is­ter Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to have Par­lia­ment vote on the new cab­i­net even though he hadn’t yet filled the key secu­rity posts.
At that point, another Sunni politi­cian, Mithal al-Alousi, told Mr. Mut­laq to sit down. “Iraqi blood is being spilled every day,” Mr. Alousi said. It was time to move for­ward. When Mr. Mut­laq pressed on with his denun­ci­a­tions, Mr. Alousi “pulled him down into his chair,” The Times reported. That was a gutsy move — live on Iraqi TV. Many Sunni insur­gents may not like what Mr. Alousi did, but he did it any­way.
As long as I see Iraqis ready to take a stand like that, I think we have to stand with them. When we don’t see Iraqis tak­ing the risk to build a pro­gres­sive Iraq, then it is indeed time to pack and go. That moment may come soon. It’s hard to tell. I won’t hes­i­tate to say so — but not yet.

If only it were _Iraqis_ instead of _an Iraqi_ tak­ing a stand. As the say­ing goes, one swal­low does not a sum­mer make.
I know Mithal al-Alousi and Saleh Mut­laq. I’ve spo­ken with them both on numer­ous occa­sions. I like them both, in their own way, and con­sider them friends of a sort. But al-Alousi is dif­fer­ent. He’s the most — and pos­si­bly only — truly hon­or­able Iraqi politi­cian I’ve met. This is a guy, a Sunni, who stands firmly for sec­u­lar­ism, who doesn’t believe that the Israeli-Palestinian fight is one that Iraq should be in, and who paid for a trip to Israel in order to fos­ter ties with the strongest econ­omy in the region with the lives of his two sons. He also believes in equal­ity before the law, and — no for­mer Ba’athist he — has been harshly crit­i­cal of the De-Ba’athification Com­mis­sion because it was run by polit­i­cal hacks work­ing for their respec­tive par­ties, so they were able to grind many, many axes against men and women who did noth­ing wrong but try to feed their fam­i­lies in an unjust sys­tem.
Obvi­ously, he’s not a per­fect man. He was jailed for a year in Ger­many for attempt­ing to take over the Iraqi embassy prior to the March 2003 inva­sion. But even that grew out of his frus­tra­tion with Saddam’s regime.
(Edit: And his trip to Israel _was_ ill-advised in the polit­i­cal cli­mate of Iraq. But he was fol­low­ing the lead of his old buddy Ahmad Cha­l­abi and the Iraqi National Con­gress, who said to the Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions that “Iraq should rec­og­nize Israel”:http://www.cfr.org/publication/6044/conversation_with_ahmad_chalabi.html. (Way down at the bot­tom.) When al-Alousi took actual steps to fol­low that up, the INC hung him out to dry and called for his head. With friends like that…)
Mut­laq, on the other hand, is a for­mer Ba’athist and claims to have some pull with the insur­gency. What the two men have in com­mon, other than being co-religionists, is that nei­ther has any real con­stituency to speak of.
Al-Alousi, bless him, got a sin­gle seat in Par­lia­ment. Mut­laq has about 11, I believe, but his claim to influ­ence rests in his alleged influ­ence with the Ba’athist ele­ments of the insur­gency. Sorry to say, every Ba’athist ever inter­viewed by TIME viewed Mut­laq as a pre­tender and paid no atten­tion to him.
So those who have hoped more than planned for this war are bet­ting on what is prob­a­bly a los­ing horse, despite al-Alousi’s hon­esty and earnest­ness. if only there were more guys like him in power! But there aren’t, because reli­gion and tribal loy­al­ties get the bet­ter of Iraqis when they need to stand up for guys like al-Alousi. I know many Iraqis who like and admire al-Alousi, but when it came time to vote in Decem­ber, they went with the Sis­tani list (if they were Shi’a) or Adnan al-Dulaimi’s list (if they were Sunni), even though they said before­hand how much they dis­liked cler­ics run­ning the show. Al-Alousi’s vision of sec­u­lar­ism and lib­er­al­ism just can’t com­pete with the forces rend­ing Iraq these days. And hop­ing peo­ple like Mut­laq and Dulaimi will be able to curb the insur­gency — or even want to, since that’s all that gives the Sun­nis a seat at the table — is a real gam­ble. Based on what I know, I don’t think the newly-elected Sunni par­lia­men­tar­i­ans will be able to deliver jack.
Friedman’s desire to look at al-Alousi as a sign that all is not lost in Iraq is nat­ural. Amer­i­cans are pre­dis­posed towards cel­e­brat­ing the actions and inten­tions of indi­vid­u­als in pol­i­tics. We vote for can­di­dates rather than lists, which points up the incom­pat­i­bil­i­ties of Amer­i­can expec­ta­tions and hopes, and the forces of group-think, sec­tar­i­an­ism and trib­al­ism at work in Iraq. Unless you’re Sad­dam, one per­son is just not going to make a huge dif­fer­ence in Iraq. Case in point: When the Amer­i­cans ran the show, the appointed a sec­u­lar Shi’ite, Ayad Allawi, as prime min­is­ter, who turned around and waged war on Fal­lu­jah and Moq­tada al-Sadr. Now, after two elec­tions and one ref­er­en­dum, the Iraqi peo­ple have elected a gov­ern­ment that has become more sec­tar­ian, not less; more divided and divi­sive. Today, al-Sadr’s a king­maker within the gov­ern­ment and the insur­gency is as vir­u­lent as ever. That’s democ­racy in Iraq. Moder­nity lost.
Look, I’ll be hon­est: I don’t know what the Amer­i­can course of action should be exactly. Stay? Leave? It’s a bit of a trick ques­tion because the mil­i­tary com­po­nent of the Amer­i­can pres­ence has been, well, almost the entirety of the Amer­i­can pres­ence, and this has long not been a mil­i­tary prob­lem. Of course U.S. troops should go as soon as pos­si­ble. But what’s really needed is an army of police train­ers, tech­ni­cians and peo­ple who can get the econ­omy back on its feet and power flow­ing again, from Amer­ica and from around the region. You want to see the forces of sec­u­lar­ism advance in Iraq? Put al-Alousi in charge of the elec­tric­ity min­istry and then spare no expense to get the lights back on for more than four hours a day in Bagh­dad — and then let him take the credit. Put sec­u­lar­ists in charge of the anti-corruption watch­dog Com­mit­tee for Pub­lic Integrity and give it some real bite. Rid plum posts like the Finance Min­istry of dis­cred­ited retreads like Bayan Jabr and put real econ­o­mists in place so they can boost employ­ment in the south. That would be a good start.
If the Iraqis are unwill­ing to take steps that de-emphasize local, tribal and sec­tar­ian loy­al­ties in their pol­i­tics — and fast — well, maybe the U.S. should just pack up and leave. These days, al-Alousi is a lonely swal­low indeed.