Baghdad ? The symbol of today’s Iraq might well be the newly trained traffic police who stand at intersections and bravely raise their hands to stop oncoming cars. No one pays the least bit of attention as they speed by the cops.

The same motorists who once would have snapped to attention before any Iraqi uniform now assume no rules apply. In fact, Iraqis no longer know what the rules of daily living are.

They no longer have a proper government — the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, for those who know it exists, is seen as an extension of U.S. power. Like former citizens of the Soviet Union, Iraqis were accustomed to a top-down, dictatorial state, where the lone political party, the Baath, delivered everything and molded behavior. Civil society was virtually nonexistent, and taking any initiative was discouraged and could be fatal.

Now the U.S. military has dismantled the institutions of the Iraqi state. The dictator is gone, as are the army and all the many special forces and security services. The Baath Party is banned, and there is little but the mosque to serve as a beacon. The result is a severe case of cultural and psychological shock.

Iraqis are struggling to figure out who they are, and what they want, and how they — Kurds, Shiite and Sunni Muslim Arabs, Christians — can live together without Saddam, the enforcer. This is a process that will take time.

Enter the Americans, with their plan to create a free-market democracy as we know it in a couple of years’ time. The disconnect is dizzying. Either U.S. officials must scale down their expectations, or they will be in Iraq for a long, long time.

Most ordinary Iraqis aren’t even sure of the meaning of democracy; over and over I heard people complain that democracy would usher in Western decadence and license. A television salesman asked me skeptically, “Does democracy mean you are free to use a satellite dish and watch bad programs, or drink in the street, or say anything you want?”

A merchant selling air conditioners added, “The people think freedom means to do whatever they please, so if the Americans leave tomorrow, everyone will kill everyone.” A professor told me how his student stepped in front of his car, as he pulled out of a lot, and said, “I have the right to stop you. This is a democracy.”

Many Iraqis worry that democracy will somehow contradict Islam. One thoughtful professor of English told me she felt it was useful to study the American model to learn the principles of organization, but no one should think that the U.S. political model could be imposed on a Muslim society.

Yet that is clearly what the administration has in mind. The dream is to shape a secular democracy in a pivotal Arab state that would be a model for the region. But what if Iraqis define democracy differently than we do?

Will the administration have the self-discipline to offer Iraqis the financial help they need but still permit them to find their own political way?

Already the U.S. temptation to indulge in full-scale social engineering is quite apparent. Americans are trying to shape Iraq’s political process, insisting that the drafters of a new constitution be selected, with U.S. help, rather than elected. This approach will give U.S. advisers more control over what goes into the constitution — such as the language on the relation of religion to state — but it may undercut the legitimacy of the whole constitutional process.

And in an act of hubris, the administration is pressing its appointed Iraqi officials to privatize state-owned firms, with the exception of oil. The supposed aim is to encourage private investment. In Iraq, anyone who has the capital to buy up those firms made their money by dealing with Saddam.

“This will create a mini-mafia just like in Russia,” an angry Iraqi businessman friend told me. “That’s what is going to happen here.”

In fact, the Russian example is instructive. U.S. pressure on Russia to privatize fast helped produce a class of Russian oligarchs who bought up the country’s resources for a pittance. Bitter Russians turned to the strongman government of ex-KGB chief Vladimir Putin, undercutting the democratic gains of the ’90s and souring the Russian public on free markets. Putin has just thrown the biggest oligarch in jail.

If U.S. officials try to mold Iraq’s polity and economy to American tastes they may spark a similar backlash among Iraqis. Help would-be Iraqi democrats, yes. Train their traffic cops, fine. But ultimately Iraqis must figure out their own set of rules.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer.