By Michael Young

As America's efforts in Iraq have hit deep sludge, one can measure the ambient gloating on the Richter scale. But the real question lies elsewhere: If America fails in Iraq, if its soldiers pack up and leave for home, is that really so desirable for the Iraqis in particular and Middle Eastern democrats in general?

Maybe the question is prompted by too many smug observations that the U.S. is an empire that, by its imperial nature, can do no right - this from Arab academics who have long sunk their teeth into American tenureship. Maybe it comes from too many remarks that since President George W. Bush's administration has not done well for the Palestinians, it cannot possibly do so for the Iraqis. Or maybe it comes from a realization that for many people, especially in the Middle East, the war in Iraq is not about Iraqis or democracy at all; it's about watching America stumble.

A year-and-a-half into America's Iraqi campaign, several things are apparent: that the premises on which the Bush administration justified the war were false; that postwar U.S. occupation policy has been disastrous, transforming a manageable situation into virtual chaos, despite the fact that Iraq is or was a cornerstone of a laudable neoconservative plan to democratize the Middle East; and that if the U.S. were to abandon Iraq today, this would result in bedlam, so that those clamoring for an American withdrawal would swap their rhetoric for a stern lament on how the Bush administration left the Iraqis to an indeterminate fate.

One can blame the Bush administration for focusing on weapons of mass destruction in the prewar period, when the only legitimate motive for going to war was to get rid of a mass murderer like Saddam Hussein, and eventually, whether directly or indirectly, other Arab despots. And, yes, the U.S. showed that no correlation existed in its mind between means and ends: If Iraq was an essential stroke in the war against terrorism, then why was so little effort made to consolidate and build upon America's military victory there as of April 9, 2003?

Worse, why was Abu Ghraib allowed to occur, when the whole point of Iraq was to show that that kind of thing was over? The U.S. carelessly gave ammunition to Arab critics of the war in particular, who, it was obvious, would always play up American crimes to better cover for their own craven silence when Abu Ghraib was periodically "emptied" of thousands of prisoners by Saddam's death squads?

However, where the critics are dead wrong is in advocating an imminent U.S. pullout from Iraq. Even John Kerry's setting a vague deadline for an American departure was a misguided election ploy. The Bush administration is right in refusing to signal even a desire to downgrade its Iraqi presence, because the moment it does so it would become a lame duck. Iraqis on all sides would arm themselves and prepare for the inevitable withdrawal. And, in that event, ignore the optimists: What would ensue is civil war, because the Iraqi government today is not strong enough to fill the vacuum the Americans would leave behind

Beyond this, what do America's critics say about Iraqi pluralism? We can highlight two of the most recognizable arguments of the agnostics: there are those who insist that Iraq cannot be democratic because its social structure won't allow it; and there are those who argue that the U.S. is not a fitting godfather to Iraqi democracy, given its hegemonic ambitions and "imperialist" bent.

To the fatalistic first line of attack, one responds that fractured systems like Iraq's are naturally pluralistic if political actors can successfully share power in a unified entity without relinquishing stifling authority to the state. More generally, Arabs are no less capable of behaving democratically than others (as the variegate experiences of Iraq, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon showed at more liberal times in their 20th-century history), or of working toward open societies. The challenge is in setting up institutions that defend democracy and free expression, but that also prevent undemocratic groups from undermining orderly alternations of power.

This is easier said than done, but hardly the structural impossibility that fatalists presume. Indeed, the latter's pervasive pessimism, when factored into policy prescriptions, can quickly become self-fulfilling.

To the second approach, one can only respond: "Nonsense!" Empires are not intrinsically malevolent. Political life in the Levant or Egypt when the areas were under colonial control was characterized by more pluralism than today. Lebanon's democracy, for example, developed under the French Mandate, while Syria's independence generation formed under the Ottomans. The liberal American empire is vastly more amenable to democratic challenges than were the Ottomans or the French, and Iraq has proven this. Just look at how a frail Ayatollah Ali Sistani so effectively neutralized the Coalition Provisional Authority.

There is no withdrawal option in Iraq today that would truly benefit the Iraqis. Even the most ardent foes of America must recognize, if Iraqi interests rather than Washington's humiliation top their agenda, that it must succeed in its endeavors. The point is whether a new Bush or Kerry administration will embrace this tenet in the months to come. Meanwhile, some might want to consider that applauding American setbacks is tantamount to wishing Iraq the very worst.