John Humphreys of BBC radio had a short article in yesterday’s News online:

To be honest, I didn't really want to come to Iraq to present Today - there are many people far better qualified than I am to talk about this complex country and the mess it's in, but you learn a lot very quickly.

The first time a rocket lands within a few yards of you in the heart of the British compound is pretty instructive. There's someone out there who wants to kill you for no better reason than you're British.

Basra may be a picnic compared with the hell of Baghdad, but even so the violence overwhelms everything.

When you can't drive into the centre of the city; when even the helicopter which brings you into the Foreign Office compound can fly only at night; when the shortest trip outside the British base needs a military escort of 18 men and a column of armoured vehicles.

But I'm leaving shortly. The soldiers who have to spend six months at a time here have my sympathy.

Living in Fear

But how much worse to be an Iraqi citizen who sees his country in such a state.

The middle class live in fear. Not just fear of the rockets, but of the very men supposed to protect them.

A surgeon told me police broke into his house, attacked him and his wife and stole their valuables - they were lucky they weren't murdered.

The British forces don't trust the police either. But the working class have it worse - most of them can't even get a job.

Did I sense any hope? Up to a point.

The British are doing their best. There are plenty of decent Iraqis working hard to rebuild their country. The oil is being pumped out of Iraq's fabulously rich fields.

But so much of the oil revenue is being stolen and the corruption is eye-watering. And if the death squads continue unchecked, God knows what will happen.

I'd love to say that I shall leave Iraq more optimistic for its future than when I arrived, but I'm afraid it wouldn't be true.

When I first read this article I found it difficult to just pick out a few paragraphs to riff on, because every paragraph suggests a different thread to work with.

Many people from the world of the media can go to Iraq and report on the bad news. Idiots on the right who complain about good news never being reported are fantasists. There is no good news. If there was good news you’d have 100 reporters out and about writing about it, rather than two, with the other 98 huddled up inside the Green Zone.

If you read this piece and went back to the article I referred to you’d have grasped the essential fact about reporting in Iraq: it’s damned dangerous, the military knows it, the press knows it, and no one goes “outside the wire.” And the military doesn’t want American or European stringers out there because they can’t control them as easily as they can the representatives of Big Media. Mr Humphreys is to be congratulated for spending his week in Hell with some squaddies.

Theoretically, Basra is supposed to be safer than Baghdad, which is safer than, say Injun country out in the wild west of Anbar province. But when transport helicopters only fly at night and trips “outside” are major expeditions, you’re losing. Actually, the very fact that things have deteriorated this far means you’ve already lost.

Two points: Mr Humphreys asks if he sensed any hope and then qualified his answer “up to a point.” He speaks of the Brits “doing their best” but adds that even with good Iraqis working hard to rebuild, and oil being pumped out of the ground, the corruption is staggering. There will always be corruption with men; temptation and weak wills are part of our imperfection. A healthy society controls corruption and crime with rigorous laws that treat all men equally but firmly. Iraq is a lawless society, although it wasn’t always like that. A society that respects all the members of the commonwealth obeys its laws, either from that respect or from fear of legal retribution. (Come to think of it, healthy society, rigorous laws, and equal treatment could also apply to the US under Bu$hCo.)

The other point Mr Humphreys makes is the lack of hope among Iraq’s middle class due to lack of jobs. Lack of meaningful jobs with a chance for improvement will create a fractured society also. Crime will blossom and grow. Civil unrest will expand, swallowing the society in death and destruction. Cultural psychologists, anthropologists, and thinking people understand lack of decent jobs, and lack of hope is the root cause of much of our urban crime these days. (Urban crime, in itself, has become a code phrase in our society.)

Like Mr Humphreys, I don’t feel any optimism about the future of the American/British imperial enterprise in Iraq either. The madness will continue, because of the stubborn, narcissistic ideology and egos of a few willful, lawless men, and that in itself is madness.