The Iraq Failure in a Sentence

As I read more and more about the Iraqi quagmire that Bush has gotten us into, I try to think of a reason why, after a 13 months, there is no noticable progress towards instating a secure Iraqi government, despite what the Bush administration tries to tell to the Americans, more or less until this past Monday (click on title link for the relevant article to start out). After much article reading, much commentary reading, and much quote reading, I came up with this sentence to sum everything up, as of today:

Democracy cannot be exported without a grass roots movement.

As many people may remember, one of Bush's policies after invading Iraq was to 'export' democracy into a new land by properly breaking up the land, planting the seeds of democracy, cultivating democracy as it germinates and flourishes, and reaping the ripe fruit that democracy would eventually bear, whether it would be by the hands of the Iraqis, the Middle East, or the hands of the American government/corporation is up to debate. Such is also the fruit. But, as anyone who is remotely familiar with horticulture, planting and taking care a grandiose and expensive plant is not an easy or simple job, especially in its early stages. As animals and pests nibble away at, and eventually kill, young saplings, even with the careful attention of a gardner, the small sprouts of democracy in Iraq are constantly devoured by Iraqi counsel assinations and sabotage to the Iraqi infrastructure.

While the Bush administration has decidedly pinned these attacks on Al Queda and other Islamic terrorists and the US armed forces crack down on Iraqi resistance, there has been little motivation and action, aside from the US government and the members of the Iraqi counsel, that show any resolve in establishing and maintaining a type of democracy or government in Iraq.

The assassination of the head of the Iraqi counsel is the latest example. The event occurred in headline print on all major media, yet there is little to report in the aftermath as to who was behind the assassination and what progress or arrests have been made. Bush and his lackeys (seemingly all-too-conveniently) decided to pin the deed on the shady 'terrorist' character without concrete proof, and, after a week, there is hardly any progress in attempting to track down the organization and the network, nor is there any relenting in the assassination attempts that followed on Sunday. The lack of witnesses and informants to give reliable and breakthrough information on insurgent activity is a forboding sign that the citizens surrounding the government are not be giving the 'grass-roots' support for the new democracy -- the fence, if you will, that keeps the animals out of the garden.

Granted there is an Iraqi military and police force, but they are at best only a dusty facade to a condemned building. The are outnumbered, poorly equipped and trained, and have been shown to be unreliable when needed, as was the case during the Fallujah and the Sadr conflict and the insurgency attack on a police station not too long ago.

The grass-roots failure has not always been there and was, in fact, strongest when the US first invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. As news footage showed at the time, Iraqis were enthusiastic and vocal at the onset of Hussein's fall from power. Unfortunately, the many poor military and political decisions made by Bush's Cabinet and his appointed representative (Paul Bremmer) to Iraq have worn Iraqi patience and has caused them to sympathize with Coalition opponents in the face of the short-term uncertain economic and political status for their country.

Unless the Administration can make an about-face and start making drastic changes in its approaches to Iraq, the Iraqi support for the new government will be forever lost, if it has not been already. Without citizens and grass-root support for the new government, whether for the current counsel, for the interim government post-June 30, or the permanent government next year, the fragile government will lose its footing and will eventually give way to an alternative form of government that the United States did not set out to establish in the first place. The US, to maintain the democracy that they plant in Iraq, must stay in and operate with the Iraqi government, like it did in Berlin and Japan after World War II and in South Korea. If not, Iraq may revert to a state of political instability and anti-American sentiment like those of Vietnam and Haiti during the Vietnam War and the 1990s respectively, but on a grander scale.