Home

Bush gives up on democracy in Iraq

Posted August 19th, 2006 by Davide Simonetti
in

It's the mantra we've been hearing over and over again, every time the reasons for the invasion of Iraq have been questioned. It's about democracy. Not WMD any more, not links to Al Qaeda and not oil. Bush and Blair's altruistic 'liberation' of Iraq was all about democracy. It doesn't matter to them how many people get slaughtered in the violence as the country breaks up because the remaining Iraqi people are free of the evil dictator Saddam Hussein and they are now able to choose their own leaders.

Our coalition has a clear goal, understood by all -- to see the Iraqi people in charge of Iraq for the first time in generations. America's task in Iraq is not only to defeat an enemy, it is to give strength to a friend - a free, representative government that serves its people and fights on their behalf. And the sooner this goal is achieved, the sooner our job will be done.

So I guess this as as big as an admission of failure as we are likely to hear.

Bush administration officials now admit that Iraqi government’s original plan to rein in the violence in Baghdad, announced in June, has failed. The Pentagon has decided to rush more American troops into the capital, and the new military operation to restore security there is expected to begin in earnest next month.

Yet some outside experts who have recently visited the White House said Bush administration officials were beginning to plan for the possibility that Iraq’s democratically elected government might not survive.

“Senior administration officials have acknowledged to me that they are considering alternatives other than democracy,” said one military affairs expert who received an Iraq briefing at the White House last month and agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity. [My emphasis]

“Everybody in the administration is being quite circumspect,” the expert said, “but you can sense their own concern that this is drifting away from democracy.”

So what exactly does the Bush administration have in mind? Perhaps re-installing Saddam or finding some other evil dictator, one that's more friendly to America of course. Maybe Bush will try to do what the British did and install a King. I also wonder whether Blair has been informed of this sudden change of heart. If not someone should tell him because he's still banging on about democracy.

The reason I say our response was even more momentous than it seemed at the time, is this. We could have chosen security as the battleground. But we didn't. We chose values. We said we didn't want another Taleban or a different Saddam. Rightly, in my view, we realised that you can't defeat a fanatical ideology just by imprisoning or killing its leaders; you have to defeat its ideas.

Of course we know about Bush's attitude to dictatorship, so maybe he'll just rule Iraq directly from Washington. No change there then.

"Of course we know about

On August 20th, 2006 Tom Welsh (not verified) says:

"Of course we know about Bush's attitude to dictatorship, so maybe he'll just rule Iraq directly from Washington."

Gee, d'you think Iraq might beat us to become the 51st state? Aw shucks.

Not so much state as

On August 20th, 2006 Davide Simonetti says:

Not so much state as province. At least in the other 50 states in the USA people get to decide who the president is (well sort of).

Comment from Sen. Chuck

On August 20th, 2006 Steve G says:

Comment from Sen. Chuck Hagel (Republican-Nebraska) on Fox News today:

HAGEL: We have a very unstable Middle East, the most unstable we’ve seen since 1948. You can measure that any way you want. The fact is the future of Iraq will be determined by the Iraqi people, just like it was in Vietnam. The answer in my opinion is not to just keep feeding more American troops into it. The Iraqi people have already made some decisions here. We, in fact, are in probably a low-grade — maybe a very defined — civil war. You’ve got corruption. Everywhere. As bad as it’s ever been. You’ve got uncontrollables that we can’t control. We can’t deal with. Iran probably has more influence in Iraq than we do at this point.

[snip]

WALLACE: You have said that you think we should begin pulling troops out within six months.

HAGEL: I do.

WALLACE: How is that going to make things better?

HAGEL: How is it going to make things better for us to continue to kill Americans and put Americans in the middle of a civil war that we have less and less control and influence over every day? How does that stabilize things? This is going to play out, Chris, on its own. I’m not saying pull out of Iraq. That’s not what I’ve said. I’ve said start withdrawing troops. We have to show the Iraqi people — and this obviously cuts right to the great anti-Americanism by any poll, by any measurements there — that we are not there to predetermine their outcome. We’re not there to control or to govern. They are going to have to do that. Now, the fact is, bottom line, Chris, there are very few options here. We don’t have any good options. We got a mess on our hands in the Middle East.

Transcript and video at

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/20/hagel-iraq-civil-war/