The first interesting tidbit in this week's news concerned articles on a 513 page unpublished report by the Office of the Inspector General detailing reconstruction failures on the part of the US in Iraq and concluding that for all the money spent, aside from mobile phone service, the lives of Iraqis have been no better from an infrastructure perspective than they were immediately before the American invasion.

You needed a 513 page multimillion dollar report to conclude that, huh?  Actually you could have saved time and money and just come to the street I used to live in a suburb of Baghdad, Hayy al Jami'a, well beyond the Green Zone and talked to me or the neighbors.  From 2003 through 2005 I lived there and never saw any infrastructure improvement.  Electricity was terrible and stayed that way, water was bad and stayed that way, landlines were unreliable and remained so, streets remained in awful shape with huge potholes, and the like.  We'd keep seeing on CNN Senator after Senator showing up and demanding to know why Iraqis weren't more grateful for all the money spent on their behalf, and my brother and I would shake our heads and wonder what the hell he was bloviating about, when nothing in our daily lives had really changed for the better.  (They could also have just read my book and saved the report too, but enough self-promoting for now.  (Buy the book.))

But the more interesting report was a legal one, involving the visit of US prosecutors to  Baghdad to meet the victims of whatever it was that happened in Nissour Square involving Blackwater to let them know about the US prosecution of the personnel in question.  They've done this before, I'm not sure why they haven't learned.  But anyway, a few things about Iraqi law and culture that make this a bad idea.

When in Iraq Important People come to address you, the assumption is they've come to give you money.  That's how it works in Iraq.  Maliki or Talabani do not go to visit the people, say in a village or something, without bringing oodles of cash.  Then everyone comes up, complains about something,and they get money.  They don't file a report, or say they'll look into it, they hand you cash on the spot, and it's done.

Now if that's the case when you ordinarily want stuff, then it is emphatically the case to settle private law wrongs, like torts and the like.  Say I get into a car accident in Iraq, as I have.  Then I bring my people, the other side brings theirs, and we settle it, within days of the accident.  No courts, no judges, no trials, just mediate it out and settle it in a manner acceptable to everyone.    There are laws about this, of course, and so a trial isn't impossible if rare, but the point is ultimately, it's less about a long drawn out affair as it is a quick disposition.  Of course I deny responsibility, of course they make me into some crazed driving maniac, but we fix a price and it all works out in the end.

Finally there is the fact that the criminal and civil trials in Iraq are pretty closely linked as a general matter.  The trials are separate, but what a criminal court finds in terms of facts can be binding on the civil court. 

So here's the situation.  An Important Man from America has come.  He is a prosecutor involving the Blackwater case, and he wants to talk to the Nissour Square victims.  What he does is related in their mind to any claim they might make for damages, and in any event he is American and so is Blackwater.

What the Iraqis are thinking is completely obvious.  They're here to pay us.  And they're happy about that probably. They don't want sympathy, in fact they probably assume the US government is on Blackwater's side in some way or other and will be negotiating a cash payment for less, offering whatever reasons it can think of, and they're ready to argue for more.   And it will be haggling session.   (As a related point, I've always found it funny that Americans are outraged if they offer a fair salary or market price to an Iraqi and he still asks for more.  Of course he does, he's haggling.  You want him to take the first price offered?  Is he a dupe?)

Now of course the US prosecutor sees it differently, what he thinks is he is coming over to tell these people that he takes them and their lives very seriously, as does his government, and he is going to prove how serious America is about this.  He wants to invite them to the trial, to keep them up to date, it's a form of criminal law diplomacy for him given the rift that the whole Nissour Square thing created.  He doesn't see his role as having anything to do with damages, that's a separate proceeding entirely in the US.  And so he might well look at this and think "what's wrong with these people, do they care about anything but money? What about justice?"  while they look at him and think "this duplicitous American bastard comes all the way from America just to tell me he feels my pain and takes this incident seriously?  So do I, what good is that anyway?  He thinks that'll put it right?"  Now I don't know that's what the US prosecutor thought, I wasn't there, but i'm fairly sure based on accounts of the session in th epublic media that it is precisely what the Iraqis thought.  This was a cop-out to them, an evasion. 

And with all the best of intentions on both sides, due to massively different legal and cultural presuppositions, more harm was done than good.

HAH