Nothing better illustrates the dilemma in Iraq than listening to President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld chattering about its future.

Bush leans into the mike and says reverently, "We are going to give — democracy — to the people of Iraq."

But feisty Rumsfeld, if asked whether the United States will allow the Iraqi Shiite majority to democratically produce a Muslim theocracy like the one in neighboring Iran, says, "We're not going to let that happen."

Bush and Rumsfeld both claim they want Iraqis to decide their own future, but what they really want is a chance to persuade Iraqis to use the ballot box to ratify their vision of how Iraq should be run.

They want a Westernized democracy, controllable by and accountable to Washington. That's not what the president says he wants - but get real. No matter how they grin and bear it, a million newly liberated Iraqi Shiites trudging to Karbala, chanting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans and ritually flogging themselves is not W's or Rummy's idea of democracy. Mine either.

So what to do? Stuff democracy down their throats like force-feeding a goose gruel to make fois gras? It's bad for the goose but great for the gourmand.

Democracy is a learned habit, not a state of nature. But the Bush administration is in no position to plan for a decade or more to breed the stable institutions it would take to overcome the power of the existing religious and ethnic elites in Iraq. It hopes Jay Garner, the retired U.S. Army lieutenant general in charge of reconstructing Iraq, can shorten that to a few months with a combination of cash, kisses on both cheeks to friendlies and a few dope slaps for the slow learners.

Bush and Rumsfeld are counting on the human craving for freedom without facing the possibility it might become freedom to stomp on people who disagree. Good luck to them. It means they have little understanding of Eastern cultures where individual freedoms are highly suspect and there is little taste for letting minorities dissent from majority sentiment. It's cultural tunnel vision.

Among Islamic fundamentalists, the defeat of secular Muslim governments by Western forces is a sign that those governments were punished by Allah for straying from the true faith by trying to emulate the infidels. In those terms, Saddam Hussein's ignominious defeat means that Allah wanted him to be replaced by leaders who hew to that good old-time Islam. From the Muslim fundamentalist perspective, the governments most successful at rejecting infidel influence are Iran, Saudi Arabia and, until Osama bin Laden's head got too big, the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The American assumption is that the vast majority of Iraqis do not agree with these powerful religious elites and, if given a chance, would overwhelm them democratically through the ballot box. We'll see if Garner, in a few months, can counter the trend running throughout the Middle East.

The reason so many former British colonies have done well as democracies is that the native elites, under British rule and tutelage, got decades of practice tamping down religious and ethnic troublemakers and keeping them powerless. We can't do that openly because we don't want to be seen as colonialists. Anyway, that's what Saddam did.

What we are more likely to do is impose a rickety puppet government, bribed to let Washington rule by remote control, and pretend it's a democracy. It might even work for a while. But it is not likely to fool anybody but the people who still think we kicked Saddam's butt just to find his weapons of mass destruction so we could come home and celebrate.

The world is not that simple. Ask the South Koreans.

Norman A. Lockman, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is associate editor of The News Journal, P.O. Box 15505, Wilmington, Del. 19850. E-mail: nlockman@delawareonline.com.