Everybody loves a winner -- maybe not

KENNETT, Mo. -- It used to be said that America never lost a war or won a peace. But times change, and there was Vietnam just waiting to amend the belief.

Since then America has engaged in numerous wars of liberation, motivation and salvation that the conventional wisdom has lost its efficacy and, well, whatever wisdom is may have provided once upon a happier era.

Today we stand on the ridge looking down at a country we said we intended to liberate from its subjugation and discover to our great surprise that we are experiencing all manner of obstacles raised by the victims we intended to save form a ruthless dictator. It won't be the first time that we have learned there is more to world peace than the simple dispatching of trained soldiers to the battlefront. We need only ask ourselves how many times we must learn the same lessons before we begin to recognize their familiarity.

But first we must go through the shopworn solutions including the holding of local plebiscites, the transfer of power from our military to their civilians, our declaration of a completed job well done, accompanied by our promise that we will monitor the progress toward human rights and liberties.

We are, after all, the recipients of the collective wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and all the other warriors of a democratic society, a system of governance, that incidentally, has fewer proponents today than it did a quarter of a century ago. It has been our aim for some time to liberate the wealth-deprived Iraqi people and let them enjoy the fruits of their underground good fortune, a huge supply of nature's best: oil. Our intentions were good even if we had not a single clue as to how this marvelous, problem-free solution could or would take place. Our faith we could accomplish this miracle of free enterprise was as strong as a Missouri Republican legislator's conviction that reducing assistance to public schools will be cleansing for the souls of their young charges.

Despite what most of us believe, the United States government is not the role model for the people who hopefully are now being liberated in the Middle East. We have neither the patience nor the resources for making these dreams come true, dreams which can only be fulfilled by those who truly seek them and secure some leadership in obtaining them.

If democracy could somehow be substituted for the government-of-choice of Iraqis, that nation's system would doom it to failure quickly enough. For democracy requires vision, strength of numbers, fiscal transmogrifications and the freedom from outside political and economic quarters. It seems none of our planners has ever hear of law and order, or corporate conscience or a formula for creating economic democracy into wealth for its true owners.

And when we add to this complex formula or arrangement for "winning the hearts and souls of the Iraqi people" the presence of a religious system that has little to no tolerance for interlopers within its realm, you are only left with an autocratic secular theocracy that presents active antagonism for any institution outside its sphere of influence.

There are enough diverse economic, religious, political elements within Iraq to make it a political challenge for the best political scientists around, who would be expunged of their vitality by first resolving the problems that have arisen in Missouri in recent weeks. Our state may not be the most progressive of the lot (and it certainly isn't) but it provides insight into the prospect of inserting democracy within the borders of Iraq. If the two major branches of government within our state cannot agree on how to finance even the most essential functions of a democracy, how can we expect those without historical or political experience to overcome the huge challenges they face in forming a workable system of government?

Indeed, we cannot even enforce a system of government that claims to be representative of the whole while actively engaged in making life easier for those already on Easy Street. The banner of popular government today is service to all, while favoring with as little notice as possible, the desires of those who provide the withal of our national political system. Saddam Hussein provided a brazen example of how military power corrupts, while the current political leaders of America are those whose careers are fed by millions and millions of campaign dollars and lobbyist employment that in many ways is more flagrant, obvious and odious than the Islamic regime in Baghdad.

The time frame for installing the kind of political/economic world we have in mind for Middle East theocracies and dictatorships is measurable not in months or years or even decades, but in generations. Someone has noted that two centuries ago America and England were considered free societies, but less than five percent of the residents of either nation voted.

Somehow in the post-Saddam climate, the Bush administration has decided that democracy is a key word in ameliorating outside criticism, an analysis that has proved more accurate than the ones concerning the presence of weapons of mass destruction with USA shipping tags attached or the inevitability of Osama bin Laden's capture on his daily stroll through downtown New York. Jefferson City doesn't hold an exclusive franchise on excuses for egregious policy decisions.

It would be nice to believe that policy errors are those of the mind and not of the heart's intent. It would also be reassuring to know that neither tax policies nor cash shortages were responsible for so many errors committed by governments and the politicians who run them. Indeed, that may be the only key to survival of the governed in the summer of 2003. As for the handwriting on the wall, is there a possibility it's a forgery?

Jack Stapleton is the editor of Missouri News & Editorial Service.