Spreading Democracy

Or maybe just that other "D" word. Dysentery.

BAGHDAD - Much of the Iraqi capital was without running water Thursday and had been for at least 24 hours, compounding the urban misery in a war zone and the blistering heat at the height of the Baghdad summer.

Residents and city officials said large sections in the west of the capital had been virtually dry for six days because the already strained electricity grid cannot provide sufficient power to run water purification and pumping stations.

Baghdad routinely suffers from periodic water outages, but this one is described by residents as one of the most extended and widespread in recent memory. The problem highlights the larger difficulties in a capital beset by violence, crumbling infrastructure, rampant crime and too little electricity to keep cool in the sweltering weather more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Jamil Hussein, a 52-year-old retired army officer who lives in northeast Baghdad, said his house has been without water for two weeks, except for two hours at night. He says the water that does flow smells and is unclean.

Two of his children have severe diarrhea that the doctor attributed to drinking what tap water was available, even after it was boiled.

"We'll have to continue drinking it, because we don't have money to buy bottled water," he said.

Do we really, really need to wait until September to have General Petraeus tell us if we are making progress over there?

What is this "winning" they keep talking about? Is this it? The American occupation being remembered for that summer the taps ran dry for weeks?

Because it seems to me like, if I was trying to fight an insurgency, I'd want to make damn sure the general populace had a reason to like me, to admire my country's "can-do" attitude, and its fierce devotion to public service, going all out to make better the lives of people who weren't even my countrymen. You know, by say, keeping fresh water and electricity plentiful, so their children didn't get sick. Maybe even plentiful enough for air conditioning, and refrigerators, so they could stay cool and eat fresh food. Even if that meant jailing a few corrupt war-profiteers of my own country or the local breed. Maybe especially if that meant jailing war-profiteers. Good optics, you know?

Because otherwise, after a week or so of 117 degree heat and no running water, I gotta think any average Jamil Q. Public is gonna start thinking about lashing out somehow. Americans would.

But of course, I'm not a counter-insurgency demigod like General Petraeus, or a resolute decider like the President, so what do I know?