A Brief ‘Bright Moment’ in Iraq

Iraqis who risked so much to vote seven weeks ago are understandably irritated that they are not seeing more results from their bravery. The men and women they elected -- well, the men anyway -- have in many cases had decades in exile and two years in Iraq to plan what to do once they achieved power.

The new National Assembly did meet Wednesday, but there was no new president, prime minister, speaker of the Assembly or other Cabinet officer to congratulate. No government formed to make the laws that might move the nation toward normality. It may have been a “bright moment,” as President Bush described it in his Wednesday news conference, but moments are fleeting.

After announcements last week that the winning Shiite coalition and second-place Kurds had reached a tentative agreement on naming a Cabinet and forming the new government, the deal fell apart on the disputed point of Kurdish control of the oil city of Kirkuk, among other things.

Neither Kurds nor Shiites hold the moral high ground in the dispute. Both were greatly persecuted by Saddam Hussein -- the Kurds suffering mightily until the Persian Gulf War, the Shiites well after that as Hussein vengefully drained the swamps that gave them shelter and livelihood in the south. Kurdish party leaders in particular are caught between practicality and the desire of many of their followers for payback.

In the spinfest that followed Wednesday’s meeting, one Shiite politician told reporters that negotiations would be finished soon, “Thursday to be exact.” Another Shiite participant bemoaned the continuing talks as “arguments of the deaf.”

As Bush also noted, however, the political process in Iraq has come a long way.

A meeting of Iraqis in Baghdad as the interim government and its national council were being formed in 2003 is shown briefly in the new Iraq war documentary “Gunner Palace.” At the meeting, U.S. troops act as coaches and referees, breaking up incipient fistfights and pulling apart yelling, gesticulating opponents. The officer in charge lectures through an interpreter about civility.

Iraqi politicians now practice the craft on their own, issuing press releases, spinning reporters and sending intermediaries to sound out opponents and potential coalition partners. The parties have more or less decided how to distribute the top jobs, including a plum for Sunnis who boycotted the election. This is complicated politics, far removed from a yelling match in a U.S.-controlled meeting room.

Soon, though, the process has to yield more: a government up to the much tougher job of writing a national constitution; a directly elected final government that can persuade or force insurgents off the violent, unstable streets; a way out for U.S. troops, who have lost more than 1,500 of their own in Iraq; and normal lives for Iraqis, whose losses are far greater.