Clashes: their way is not our way--but we must adapt to their way.(At War II)(Iraq War)

THE murder of four American civilian contractors in Fallujah, and then the instant defilement of their corpses, is conspicuously barbarous. So is the maltreatment of hostages, and the threat to burn them alive. Barbarous but not surprising: People who have been brutalized as thoroughly as Iraqis commit brutalities as though that were normal. Context determines behavior. For as long as anyone can remember, Iraq has been in the hands of some thug whose will is the only law. No institutions of any kind have ever existed to mediate among interests. To protect themselves, people can only turn to those of their own kind. If some important interest is at stake, violence quickly rises through the levels of family, tribe, religious sect, and ethnicity. However outrageous, brutality is the way to get things done under absolute rule, a system of cruel and self-perpetuating custom.

At Fallujah, and in the cases of hostages, television cameras were ready to record what was happening. The brutality was evidently not the work of men whose passions had overwhelmed their human inhibitions. Quite the contrary, this is exemplary force, premeditated and staged by some in order to compel others to buckle under and do their bidding. These Sunnis of Fallujah and elsewhere are trying to make the simple point that they are ready to do whatever they have to do, no matter how violent, for the sake of advancing themselves and their interests.

By coincidence, the wider context presents opportunities for further exemplary force. All can see for themselves that recent acts of terror in Madrid immediately reversed Spanish policy toward Iraq; perhaps Washington can be intimidated into similar surrender. Crucially, Iraqis are to have a government of their own as from the end of June. Its composition and its powers are still unknown, but it promises to be representative and popular. The Shiite ayatollahs of Iran are financing the young cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to get into place a government on their own absolute model. A willing tool, as unscrupulous as he is ambitious, al-Sadr knows that the entire Iraqi elite--including the senior Shiite ayatollahs--mistrust him and will do whatever they can to keep him out. His only hope is to order his militia to shoot his way into power. Unwilling to risk being left behind, the Sunnis have to do the same. In the absence of agreed or institutional mechanisms for going about it peacefully, such trials of strength are the customary resort. The fighting that broke out in several cities is the equivalent of electoral campaigning in a democracy.

"No man, no problem," was Stalin's master instruction for absolute rule, and Saddam Hussein made sure to follow it like the attentive pupil he was. He would have arrested Moqtada al-Sadr and shot him, as he shot the ayatollah's father and other members of the family. He would then have filled mass graves in the desert with the corpses of any and all Shiites found with weapons in their possession. He might have bought off his fellow Sunnis in Fallujah with whatever bribes were acceptable, but if they had ideas above their station they too would have ended in mass graves. At his trial, he will no doubt argue that he was only keeping the peace, while the Americans are only capable of losing it. That is the absolute ruler's last line of defense; and the unfortunate Arab and Muslim masses bow to perpetual tyranny because they know from bitter experience that the only alternative has ever been anarchy.

That far-sighted Frenchman and sometime ...