Fund the Iraqi grass roots

THE DEMOCRATICALLY elected government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has proved a grave disappointment. Security has worsened since Maliki has been in power. Ignoring the pleas of U.S. officials, he has been unwilling to crack down on the militias and death squads that fuel sectarian violence -- and the mass kidnapping from a Ministry of Higher Education building in Baghdad on Tuesday by gunmen in police uniforms shows the consequences.

Last month, Maliki's government refused to cooperate with U.S. troops searching for a kidnapped comrade. A week later, Maliki ordered U.S. forces to lift a blockade of Sadr City, where the missing soldier was believed to be held.

Corruption remains corrosive. Maliki's administration has hemorrhaged hundreds of millions of dollars. Oil revenues and foreign aid disappear. Maliki and his allies treat ministries as mechanisms for patronage. They dispense jobs to political loyalists, not able technocrats. Officials in the Shiite-dominated Health Ministry, for example, have replaced experienced doctors with uneducated militiamen.

But does this mean that the U.S. ambition to bring democracy to Iraq was a mistake? As a supporter of the war, and later an advisor to the U.S. occupation authority, I don't think so. Despite our disappointment with Maliki, the strategic rationale for promoting democracy in the Middle East -- and in Iraq in particular -- remains sound. But it needs to be a long-term strategy, as demonstrated by our success in Korea, where more than 35,000 American servicemen sacrificed their lives. Half a century later, the juxtaposition of totalitarian, destitute and nuclear North Korea with thriving and peaceful South Korea shows the value of a long-term strategy to build democracy.

With chaos growing, impatience in Washington should not come as a surprise. In March, Congress charged a bipartisan commission chaired by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) to look at Iraq with "fresh eyes," but it's already clear that its final recommendations will not make a priority of preserving democracy. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said he has no confidence in Maliki and has called for Iraq's division. Others seek to scrap the constitution or impose a strongman. Rumors circulate in Baghdad that the CIA plans a coup.