Iraq and democracy

Yesterday I read two pieces on Iraq: this one written by Lawrence Kaplan that appeared in The New Republic and this one by Victor Davis Hanson. The two pieces seemed to reinforce two trends in Iraq that I seem to be detecting: that the Iraqi armed forces, under U.S. guidance, are steadily improving and that the government, which to a large extent has been left to its own devices, is a mess.

As Kaplan says:

The level of corruption that pervades Iraq's ministerial orbit, for instance, would have made South Vietnam's kleptocrats blush. The problem extends beyond a simple lack of good governance. In a case that has been highly publicized in the Iraqi press, Sunni lawmaker Mishaan Al Juburi was recently charged with embezzling funds meant to pay for the protection of an oil pipeline in Iraq's north. Not all that unusual, but prosecutors suspect he then funneled the money to insurgents who blew up the pipeline.

Meanwhile, Hanson notes:

There are now 10 Iraqi divisions. The newest is the 9th Mechanized Division, at Taji, of Maj. Gen. Bashar Ayoub, trained under the auspices of Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey's officers of the Multinational Security Transition Command.

A Patton-like veteran of three bloody wars, Gen. Bashar Ayoub has fashioned ex nihilo a new division replete with refurbished Soviet T-72 tanks and scores of veteran officers from the old Iraqi army. He plans to take over most of the security of Taji, and was out on the streets with his men even before his division fully materialized.

I also read recently that U.S. troops have growing faith in their Iraqi counterparts, and that it has been some time since Iraqi troops retreated from the battlefield as they did in 2004.

All of this makes me wonder about something. In the face of apparent incompetence by the Iraqi government, and growing competence by the military, what are the chances of a coup in the country? There are numerous examples of the military in third-world countries overthrowing incompetent governments -- sometimes with the support of the people, who reckon that the military leaders can't be much worse than those they just ousted.

I'm not saying that is going to happen in Iraq, but I don't think it can be dismissed out of hand either.

Update: Some evidence of Iraq's growing military capabilities here.