Larry Diamond, former senior adviser to the CPA in Baghdad, has a long, wonkish piece up at Foreign Affairs on “What Went Wrong in Iraq.” It’s supposed to be a how-to on occupation, not an argument against the war, but it does (unwittingly) illuminate the futility of nation-building – even as it endorses more vigorous nation-building in Iraq. Typical Council on Foreign Relations fare. Anyway, here’s the clearest articulation yet of what these folks mean by “staying the course”:
- Because of the failures and shortcomings of the occupation – as well as the intrinsic difficulties that any occupation following Saddam’s tyranny was bound to confront – it is going to take a number of years to rebuild the Iraqi state and to construct any kind of viable democratic and constitutional order in Iraq. The post-handover transition is going to be long, and initially very bloody. It is not clear that the country is going to be able to conduct reasonably credible elections by next January. And even if those elections are held in a minimally acceptable fashion, it is hard to imagine that the over-ambitious transition timetable for the remainder of 2005 will be kept.
Does anyone seriously think the “construction” of a “viable democratic and constitutional order in Iraq” will be complete a year from now?