A Central Pillar of Iraq Policy Crumbling

Bush's administration has insisted that political progress would quell the insurgency. But the reverse may be true, U.S. analysts say.
Senior U.S. officials have begun to question a key presumption of American strategy in Iraq: that establishing democracy there can erode and ultimately eradicate the insurgency gripping the country. The expectation that political progress would bring stability has been fundamental to the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, as well as a central theme of White House rhetoric to convince the American public that its policy in Iraq remains on course.


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Iraq's Sunni Muslim Arabs, who are believed to form the core of the insurgency, are bitterly opposed to a constitution drafted mainly by the country's majority Shiite Muslims and ethnic Kurds. Yet from all indications, the Sunnis will fail to muster enough votes to defeat it. "It could make people on the fence a little more angry or come off the fence," said a senior U.S. official who requested anonymity. A growing number of experts outside the administration and in Iraq agree with such assessments. "If the constitution passes in a non-amicable way, the violence will increase," said Ali Dabagh, a member of Iraq's transitional National Assembly who is believed to be close to Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. The White House has consistently linked the building of democracy in Iraq and the broader Middle East with the defeat of the insurgency.

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In recent days, Bush, Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have tried to shore up public support for staying in Iraq. But Middle East experts say they have found little correlation between Iraq's emerging democracy and the rebellion's strength.


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"The democratic process as it has worked so far has certainly done nothing to undermine the insurgency," said Nathan Brown, who researches Middle East political reform at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Robert Malley, co-author of a September report by the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit organization that deals with conflict resolution, concluded that approval of the draft constitution could make things worse. Malley called the administration's Iraq policy "a case study of pinning too much hope on an electoral process without doing so much of the other work." Success in Iraq "is not about democracy or non-democracy; it's about reaching consensus on a political pact that all parties agree to," said Malley, a former advisor to President Clinton on Arab-Israeli affairs. "If they don't agree, the political process won't help."







http://www.buzzflash.com/?track=Head

You must have order. The notion that a stooge government can
change things around when you cannot enforce order in the basic
elements of civil life ANYWHERE is fantasy. You cannot create
a successful government 100% out of propaganda.

everything and end the insurrection? But I thought bringing democracy would automatically fix all these persistent little problems. Who ever could have thought two years ago that things would turn out this way?

Just like 9/11 or Katrina-no one could have seen this coming............. :sarcasm: