Did I have a hand in this? A couple of months ago I sent an e-mail to Iraqi blogger Zeyad, asking him about the place of tribalism in modern Iraq; I had happened upon a World Book Encyclopedia from the mid-1960s and read that even then, tribal society was generally sequestered from the growing urban areas. For whatever reason — perhaps others inquired alongside me — Zeyad now has three concentrated essays on Iraq's tribal and familial politics. I haven't had the time to read them yet but if you've got a spare forty-five minutes, they're here, here and here.

Interesting stuff, indeed. I believe that a nation's culture can't be judged or accepted definitively if it has existed only under a rule of the strong and modern authoritarianism — every institution in society would be drawn from a coarse lifestyle based on power and violence instead of democracy's valuations of popularity and civil discourse — and that the true character of a people will only mature when living freely. Germany, Eastern Europe, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other countries exemplify this. But Iraq's present condition is the one with which Allied troops and Iraqi democrats must begin. We're best off understanding it.