David Brooks writes in the NYTimes from time to time.  He has taken the Passover story and bent it to the problems of the Iraqi people who once shared their property and homes with the ancient Hebrews.  Unfortunately, he chooses to dwell on the rectitude of the American invasion of Iraq (ancient Babylon and Assyria) where he minimizes the interference of the Americans and reminds us of the excesses of Saddam Hussein.

But it really is interesting, the role that Iraq has played in the story of the journey from Ur to Palestine via Egyptian slavery by the ancient Hebrews who listened to the voice of their God.

Iraq is a made up country.  It was the home of the Persians, the Chaldians, the Syrians, Assyrians and Babylonians as well as those who were to become the Kurds , Christians and, of course the Jews.  The Babylonian captivity under Nebuchadnezzar was, the truth be told, a benevolent one.  Yet, when Cyrus let them go home and eventually built their second Temple, the mixed peoples back home became a 20^th Century artifact, Iraq.  Because of the advent of Mohammad and Islam, the picture of all these people living in the same historic space has been overcome by factions of Islam and it is in this present time that America has chosen to invade that land and try to sort out what has been created over hundreds of years and movements of many different peoples and beliefs.  David Brooks would simplify it by a Mr. Past and a Mr. Future who discourse about tyranny or the birth pangs of democracy.

Mr. Past has a lot to tell us if we open our minds to the lessons he has to teach. Totalitarian countries, that rise and fall along with militarism -that never seems to be out of fashion -are still with us.  The lessons of the past also include the histories of successful peoples who managed to survive attempts to exterminate them and the lessons of peoples who have disappeared from the face of the earth.

In Iraq, if you look closely at the population, there are a great many different people, left over from ancient times and whose unique religious practices have much to tell us.  The preponderance of Sunnis and Shiites who are in a civil war to take over the “democratic” government imposed by the United States only tells us that what was put into place by the British and French at the end of World War I and II did not include democracy or stability.  The rise of another dictator in place of Saddam Hussein could have been predicted.  The land, plowed up by civil unrest is not the best where seeds of democracy can grow.