Friday, November 14, 2003

Op-Ed Contributor: The Sabotage of Democracy:
"The hastily called conference at the White House involving America's top man in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, clearly revealed that the Bush administration knows its program in Iraq is failing. The 'Iraqification' of the security forces has not dimmed the rate or deadliness of attacks against coalition troops; the Iraqi Governing Council has willfully stalled the process of drafting a new constitution; a new American intelligence report leaked to the press indicates that Iraqis are increasingly angry with the American presence. "

The administration is now going to grant the Governing Council's wish: it will become more or less an autonomous provisional government. In return, the council has promised to set a timetable for drafting a constitution and holding democratic national elections (although, oddly, the question of which will come first remains up in the air). This new approach, the White House hopes, will make Iraqis feel more responsible for their own fate, and thus more willing to take over security from coalition forces. In sum, the administration that waged a war for democracy now wants an exit strategy that is not at all dependent upon Iraq's democratic progress.

In fact, the administration's efforts to improve internal security and midwife democracy are now seriously at odds. Where once American officials were sensitive to the need to have political reconstruction precede the re-establishment of a small Iraqi army, they are now rushing Iraqis into uniform, showing no concern about the long history of overgrown security and military forces running roughshod over the country's parliaments and civil traditions.

Worse, the administration remains convinced that the democratic participation of the Iraqi people in a constitutional assembly would be counterproductive. Senior officials in Washington and in the Coalition Provisional Authority have warned that a new constitution should be the product of a small unelected committee. Introducing democracy now, they feel, would undermine the focus of the Coalition Authority and the Governing Council, whose members would naturally be consumed by elections and constitutional deliberations. Quick democracy might also empower illiberal, anti-American forces among the Shiites — who, given their majority status in the population, could possibly dominate a constitutional convention.…

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/14/opinion/14GERE.html

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