The Wait
On Monday, in less than a week, the major league baseball season will officially start for my hometown Seattle Mariners. Despite some signs of hope, most informed observers predict another disappointing campaign for the M’s, who added some decent bats to their lineup but allowed their raggedy pitching staff to grow another year older without making any substantial improvements.
But today, the good news is that the M’s are tied for first place with the mighty Anaheim (or is it Los Angeles) Angels, the hated Texas Rangers, and the perpetually-competitive Oakland A’s. High-priced slugger Richie Sexton remains healthy, Jamie Moyer has surrendered no home runs to opposition bats, Brett Boone is leading the league with 0 home runs and 0 RBIs, and there is every reason to believe that the amazing Ichiro will extend his 0 game hitting streak another 57 games to surpass Joe DiMaggio’s fabled record.
For fans in Seattle and the 20 other cities whose teams will not be playing come October, these are the good days. The days of hope and optimism, when expectations run high and the most dire predictions – however well-founded – have not yet materialized. As much as I want the season to start and to be able to watch and enjoy the games, I dread the nearly-inevitable moment when reality sets in and the mediocrity dictated by the undeniable structural flaws of this team finally makes itself known on the field.
I’m viewing the events in Iraq with that same sense of foreboding. To the extent that news from Iraq is penetrating the unified field of Schiavo-Michael Jackson garbage cluttering the American media right now, I understand that two months after the legendary elections, the good people of Iraq cannot agree on the composition of their first democratic government.
There are, on the surface, two ways to look at that. First is that it’s bad for Iraq and bad for American policy, because the sooner they can get their act together, the sooner all the good things that come from having imposed a democracy in the heart of the Middle East will start happening, and the sooner we can bring our troops home. The second is that it is prima facea evidence that it was idiocy to have elections without a more solid foundation of civil culture, and that all the people who have been saying this are neither (necessarily) condescending racists nor anti-Americans: they are people who just happen to have drawn correct conclusions from their understanding of the situation.
Me, I think the stalemate is the best thing that could happen in Iraq. As with the start to the baseball season, it means that none of the very worst outcomes can happen yet. It means the secular nationalists (led by Alawi), who got wiped out in the voting, are holding their own against the fundamentalists. It means the Shia have not succeeded in confirming their majoritarian status constitutionally, and thus cannot proceed with any of the retribution they have in store for the Sunnis under the cloak of legitimacy and government. It means the black curtain of oppression cannot yet be fully drawn over the female population of Iraq, that the stonings and intimidation and repression that are occurring across the countryside do not yet have the weight of law. And that here is not yet a government to ask the US (sorry, “coalition” forces) to step back while those who gained power ensure that they don’t have to deal with the inconvenience of dissident liberals or intelligentsia holding them to account with their troublesome “principles.”
Night is about to fall in Iraq. It may take the form of righteous oppression legitimated by majority vote, the inevitable result of a democratic process imposed before the rule of law, and the underlying public trust necessary for rule of law, can be established. Or it may take the form of outright civil war, as minorities fight desperately for survival, knowing that if they allow a government to form, their second-class status will be locked into place, if not by the letter of the law, then by its selective application. Or President Bush will have to explain to the families of American servicemen killed in pursuit of his vision that their deaths helped to establish the Islamic Republic of Iraq, the potential of whose daughters will be lost to the world for a generation.
Is it possible that Iraq will defy the odds and form a functioning democracy with real civil rights for minorities and women? Sure. And it’s possible the Mariners will win the World Series this year. I fervently hope for both of these things. But as time slips away, hopes are brought into inevitable collision with the merciless logic of facts.
That’s why sometimes, the wait is better.
8:32:00 AM 
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