Fascinating

Michael Totten dispatch from Iraq.

On measuring public opinion:

"How do you measure public opinion?" I said to him. "How do you know what people really think? We all know about this tendency in Iraq where people tell you what they think you want to hear – or what they want you to hear, which isn't necessarily the same thing. If you ask what Iraqis think of the American military while you're standing there with guns in your hands, they might say oh, we love you guys. Then someone from the Guardian newspaper comes along and asks what they think of the imperial occupation forces, and the same people might say we hate them. So what's their real opinion? Do you take this sort of thing into account? Do you have Iraqis feeling out the opinions of people for you?"

"We do," he said.

"And they report back to you?" I said.

"Right," he said. "We have the Iraqi Advisor Task Force. They aren't spies. That's illegal. But they're hired to measure atmospherics. They monitor the mosques. They hit the restaurants, places like that. And we get these reports almost every other day. Over time we've seen the atmospherics and compared them to what you were talking about, the guy on the street talking to the U.S. soldier. Do they match up? And if they don't match up, we have to figure out what we need to change about the way we're presenting ourselves."

Smart. And then there's this:

MJT: They say you're a good guy to talk to because you give straight answers. It's hard to get straight answers in Iraq.

Sayid: Yeah.

MJT: Can you explain to me why that is? I mean, I have an idea why, but I'm sure you understand it better than I do.

Sayid: It's the formula of our community. There are many kinds of people. I will give you a straight answer, but it's Iraqi like me.

Just 20 percent of our people are good. 80 percent are bad. You should know that.

This is a fascinating issue - the issue of good information and good people. Everyone knows there are people that suck. And people that suck are constant sources of bad information - either intentionally or unintentionally since their outlook is skewed and stupid and generally off. We all know them, work with them, or otherwise have deal with them some of the time. Sometimes it's the traffic cop, sometimes it's the customer service representative, sometimes it's your step-mother, sometimes it's your boss, sometimes it's the dude in charge of the AIG mortgage unit. The question is always - does this person have power - and the good people need to limit the power of the shitty people. Good people do this by honest criticism and sharing information with one another. Bad people get bad reputations, etc. In some cases, however, the bad people are able to fool the good people, or gain access to power through fear and intimidation or other manipulative tactics...and Saddam's Iraq was basically this - a world turned completely upside down where the good folks had no recourse against the idiocy and ridiculous shittiness of Saddam and his pyramid structure of terror and stupidity.

In America, we have plenty of people that suck. I'd say about 10%. (that's 30 million) I'd say there are another 20% that have the potential to suck, but given the right circumstances they are okay. I'd say there are probably 40% additional people who are capable of standing by and doing nothing against the suckiness, and then about 30% of people who are fundamentally decent and will never change. So in great times, we can get to 90% good folks. But there are certainly scenarios I could imagine when if would feel like 70% of the people suck...where you have 30% who truly suck and then 40% who just accept it and do nothing and secretly hate it, but can't do anything about it.

So. By this one dude's account - he claims Iraq is at the 20% cool and 80% suck rate. I imagine, given the right circumstances, this could shift. However, I am not naive and recognize cultural specificity and could buy the argument that Iraqis have a fundamentally higher percentage of shitty people than Americans. I don't find this claim to be racist, although I'm willing to recognize it may be ignorant. But ask any American serving over there or any Arab commentator, and they generally argue that Arabs - in general - don't have the best outlook on life and tend to lie a lot. This is one reason why a lot of American troops argue the Iraqis suck ass (not Saddam, not the the Baaths, but the Iraqis in general).

Can a society with a low good people rate - say in the 20% - operate as a good society? Could the 20% game the system in the way bad folks are sometimes able to game the system in their favor? I think it's possible, but that is a huge and difficult task.

In any future nation-building exercise, the people-who-suck ratio should be taken into account. If over 50% of the nation sucks ass, it's going to be very difficult for a "good" society to emerge.