While the Shrubbers busied themselves turning Iraq into a source of Republican patronage, handing out the jobs and contracts, tens of thousand of Muslim protesters flooded the streets of Baghdad Friday, shouting "No Bush, no Saddam, yes to Islam!" and calling for an Islamic state. The military's flacks and their media lapdogs are already claiming that they regard this as just another swell example of the "Iraqi freedom" we were fighting for being put in action. You know, the same just-letting-off-steam line Donald Rumsfeld took toward those "rambunctious" looters earlier this week.

But surely many of the war's supporters must be worried. They wanted a modern, liberal-democratic-capitalist state for Iraq that would give up hatred of America and Israel and become an example for the rest of the Arab world. The "democratic domino theory," this has been called, but it seems that dominos can fall a lot of different ways.

The neocon/neoliberal supporters of "regime change" are probably right that the people and economies of the Middle East and the world would be better off if that troubled region could suddenly turn itself into Canada, or at least Eastern Europe.  Murderous totalitarianism regimes are so last century; they deserve to be changed right the hell out of power. 

However, there are lots of ways that regimes can change. As at least some conservatives have admitted, even totalitarian states don't last forever. The Soviet Empire collapsed of its own weight, and at behest of its own leaders and people, when the American Cold Warriors least expected it, without the U.S. unleashing a single bomb or missile on Moscow.  Even in that case, the immediate aftermath of communism's collapse was not orderly liberal democracy, but (in many cases) an orgy of ethnic cleansing and organized crime. Totalitarianism suppresses civil society and political expression to be sure, but it also suppresses ethnic particularism and religious fanaticism. Those are forces on the rise all over the world, even among populations that haven't been brutally repressed. Lots of American Christian fundamentalists seemed to regard Bill Clinton as a corrupt, secular dictator, but the conservative Muslims of Iraq had the genuine article to contend with. They were bound to make up for lost time once the lid came off.

In Iraq, Bush and company decided on a shortcut to "regime change," perestroika by force, instantly turning the U.S. into a foreign occupier rather than an example. We systematically wiped out the country's political and communications infrastructure, shattering the lives of the many middle-class professionals who had to have reached some accommodation with Saddam's tyranny in order to pursue their careers. These people were the potential core constituency for a secular democratic capitalist Iraq, but the U.S. has created a situation where those people are impoverished and demoralized, opening a vacuum for other types of leadership with other goals. Muslim clerics and their poor supporters (especially the Shiites) were ready to go. I was struck by this passage from the Washington Post story on the protests: "In the absence of strong government, Islam often provides the organizing principle, and the civic institutions, of Muslim societies."