Look, I'm not entirely sure what the story is with this, but when 50 to 120 armed men enter Baghdad's city hall during a dust storm, depose the old mayor, and install their own guy, it seems fairly obvious that freedom is not marching, crawling, or even twitching a whole lot. Too many antsy guys with guns are standing in front of it.
What's becoming clear is that stability in Iraq might be in a zero-sum struggle with freedom. This Shi'ite thug is probably going to remain mayor of Baghdad, but, on the bright side, that may invest him and his group in the political process. As Larry Diamond says:
If we do not pursue a political strategy that seeks to divide and peel away part of the violent resistance, by bringing them into the political process and assuring them that we are going to leave—and completely—within some foreseeable time (even if it is three years from now), then the insurgency will keep burning
But if we do follow his recommendation, we end up injecting a lot of regressive, Islamic thugs into the government, and the secular oasis we imagined for the Arab world is proved, in large part, to have always been a mirage. Which, maybe, it always was.
