ASTUTE COMMENTARY ON IRAQ

If the United States is going to succeed in its campaign to remake Iraq, its proconsuls here must find, draw in and then rapidly get out of the way of Iraqis ready to erase the cruelty of Hussein's regime. That is a huge task in a country with a population so traumatized by a half-century of tyranny, constant war and isolation that it is wary about openly engaging in politics, and where a sizeable minority benefited from Baath Party rule.

Traveling on a U.S. military transportation network that spans Iraq's insular, fragmented regions, I found in Baghdad, Basra, Mosul, Salahaddin and Kirkuk and elsewhere a still uneven mosaic of American-Iraqi cooperation that must now be rapidly extended. This nascent cooperation was evident across the region north of Baghdad and the so-called Sunni triangle, and in the Shiite south. Outside the Sunni triangle, as the area where most Sunnis live has come to be known, Iraq is much calmer than I expected from daily dispatches and television accounts that rarely treat sustained progress as news. The joint American-British occupation authority is making real progress in handing over responsibility to local authorities.

American generals in the north recognize their most urgent challenge far better than the occupation authorities in Baghdad. "We don't want other American troops to replace us," an Army one-star general from the 4th Infantry Division said at a background briefing in Kirkuk. "Turning things over to another U.S. military unit doesn't solve the problem here. We have to turn over to Iraqis."...

The needs of Iraqis for security, electricity, water and their own political leadership -- in a sense, for the freedom to cross the street -- cannot be delayed in interminable fashion while the State Department pursues a regional strategy that gives priority to Arab politics over Iraq's development, while the Pentagon lets bureaucratic norms determine the shape of a new Iraqi army, and while the two departments fight each other at every step for American, not Iraqi, reasons.

In his cavernous office in one of Hussein's more grotesque Baghdad palaces the other day, President Bush's special representative, L. Paul Bremer, argued that U.S. engagement can succeed here -- over time. Bremer may be right, but my question is whether he will have that time, whether American impatience can be contained while progress moves at an ambiguous pace and setbacks get broadcast loudly in our 24/7 media. Fortunately, Bremer suddenly seems like a man in a hurry, ready to turn over greater responsibility to Iraqis whom he initially treated with great wariness...

Petraeus has put his considerable energy and prestige behind that sentiment. He charged ahead on establishing militia units in the Mosul region while the idea was still being debated by other commanders. He tells his subordinates that "money is ammunition in this struggle," and exhorts them to find and complete community action tasks as quickly as possible. School counts, rather than body counts, are his measuring rod of progress.

The 101st has spent $6.5 million on 1,398 projects so far in a spurt of unabashed nation-building that has cost U.S. taxpayers nothing. The Commanders Emergency Response Funds that Petraeus has tapped into come from $1.7 billion in Baathist regime assets seized in U.S. banks and $795 million in Hussein's cash seized by American soldiers.

"It makes a difference that on the day after we have to go into a neighborhood and kick in the gates to find bad guys that we come back to repair the gates, pass out soccer balls and roasted chickens and pay the kids to paint over bad graffiti," Lt. Col. Michael Meese told me.

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