It's all on again. Now that the invasion of Iraq is seemingly complete, the so-called "reconstruction" process has become the titbit over which the political leaders, the business sector, and the international NGOs have homed in on, like seagulls to a beach picnic. This is not encouraging for Iraq's future. Despite many attempts, the West has not apparently learnt the basic lessons of helping to build non-Western socio-political models in shattered societies.
In the Middle East context, the towering icon of failure is the nominal Palestinian "nation". This case sets a tragic foundation for all subsequent endeavours in the region. By all accounts, the mistakes in Palestine are about to be repeated in Iraq, as indeed they were - are - in Afghanistan.
In relation to the Iraqi rehabilitation, it is useful to consider these errors and to assess their links to the latest target of the West's largely unwanted charity.
In Palestine, the negative impact of the British mandate, following centuries of Ottoman rule, has been exacerbated by a range of cultural and historic characteristics such as: arbitrary national borders; the proximity of a valuable political commodity worth controlling (that is, the Israeli state); an easily demonised culture; a history of distinct tribal, ethnic and religious communities; --
a power-obsessed, previously exiled, political leader; and an Islamic culture that manifests often as a secular force.
The similarities with the current state of Iraq are clear.
In Palestine, the presence of these conditions has tended to undermine the support for the vibrant local civil sector and its myriad civil associations. These groups, often small and locally focused, were, and remain, at the forefront of Palestinian culture and are largely responsible for the survival of a Palestinian social and cultural identity.
But despite acting as the figurehead of the Palestinian cause, the role of the PLO in relation to street-level Palestine was negligible. The contribution of the Fatah militarist ascendancy to the civil wellbeing of the Palestinian people was mostly non-existent. For example, throughout much of the 1980s, the PLO's military budget was roughly eight times that of its education budget. What civil agenda existed was as marketing for the wider cause of Palestinian independent statehood.
In Iraq, the same course is under way. With the introduction of the US-British "interim" leadership, the cast is being set for the influx of Western values and Western culture and the construction of Western socio-political models.
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Already, many of the most inappropriate examples of US and European culture - from the American Southern evangelists to the political lobbyists and the globalisation acolytes - are jostling at the gates of Baghdad.
The vast range of indigenous organisations in Iraq are likely to be overwhelmed by the mad rush to establish inappropriate socio-political structures on the area and its people.
The strength of Islam as an integral part of day-to-day social interaction and activity across the region has engendered the development of a highly sophisticated civil sector.
The need to fly in ready-made, demountable, social and political hardware to drop on hapless "Orientals" - "for their own good" - illuminates the distinct lack of imagination at the very top of the dominant
so-called globalised elites and the inability to imagine options other than the garden-variety Western democratic state. What can't be imagined can't be controlled.
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In Iraq, again, what we are seeing is the extension of what expatriate Palestinian writer Edward Said identified as the cultural hegemony established by Western cultural elites over the Middle East region. As Said notes, this imaging of "Orientals", using the filters of Western language and iconography, says a lot about ourselves and our own fears; Orientalism has less to do with the "Orient" than it does with "our world".
This is another tragedy waiting to happen in a region due for some understanding and real assistance.
As the West raves fulsomely over the value of democracy in Iraq, we might consider not only the "the rule of the majority" in the West - where just over a third of the primary vote wins a national election, as here in Australia - but also the alternative models by which just and fair societies can be built and maintained.
The Islamic models of social emancipation across the Middle East may not be perfect. In this they share common ground with our own models. But they are right, at least in the sense that they resonate. That doesn't mean some of the more universally agreed standards of human rights need not be adhered to, but that any change, in Iraq or elsewhere, needs to go through, not bypass, the many and vital civil communities in the Islamic world.