America is doing it right in Iraq

Exporting democracy, by invading countries and arresting their leaders can work, as long as it has the long term support of the people and for this, the people have to want democracy. In the end it is their country.

What the US has failed to do in both Iraq and Afghanistan is gain that support by failing to respect the one fundamental aspect of democracy: government for the people, by the people. For nearly two years Iraq has been ruled by a predominately US led government, coupled with bad media coverage implying the transitional government were puppets acting in the US's interests.

The insurgents fighting this war are predominately Sunni Muslims. A minority group, but with a controlling influence in Suddam's Government. Their leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has openly condemned the act of trying to implement democracy. In a video recently published he said, "We have declared a bitter war against democracy and all those who seek to enact it."

The next strategy the US is using to obtain the support of the Sunni minority is to give them an incentive to vote in the election. They are doing this by removing all power of the Sunni population if they don't vote. In other words by letting them abstain from voting it is not giving them an input into their own Government. Many pundits believe that this will trigger a thought in their minds that the only possible way to achieve an input into the running of the new government is to participate in it. But will this be enough to convince them to vote in something that their leader has denounced as "against the rule of God".

Surprisingly Sunni Muslims in other countries obviously want democracy. In Afghanistan Sunni Muslims, who make up about 84 per cent of the population, were involved in the phases of implementing democracy in their own country. If the Sunni ideology is able to co-exist with the notion of democracy in Afghanistan surely it is possible for it to exist in Iraq.

Algeria, another predominately Sunni country (99 per cent), has a large percentage of the population calling for democracy in the Middle East. Democracy is also being called for by the people of Kuwait whose population is about 70 per cent Sunni Muslim.

In spite of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's rhetoric the Iraqi Islamic Party, the major Sunni political organisation in the country, had Sunni candidates with the courage to run in the recent elections, which outlines the point that at least some Sunni Muslims are in search of a democratic Iraq.

Another commonly overlooked point is that the Sunni population fails to have their own religious clergy meaning that although religious power brokers in the movement might call for boycotts they do not represent the views of the whole movement.

The Iraqi economy is also steadily improving; the exchange price of the Iraqi Dinar has risen in the last 12 months. Iraq has vast oil reserves, the ability to have a booming agriculture industry and an intelligent population, all of which are valuable assets when it comes to building up an economy. Free countries are also kicking in to bolster the Iraq. Nearly 40 nations have offered debt relief to the troubled country and countries and organisations such as the US State Department have contributed nearly $18.4 billion to rebuilding Iraqi infrastructure.

The precedent set by America by invading Iraq has also rubbed off in the rest of the world. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi not only abandoned his nuclear weapons program after the fall of Saddam, but has recently encouraged Iran and North Korea to do the same.

But there is a more serious side to the issue. Despite full scale assaults on Falluja there is no sign of the security in Iraq improving. Many people are blaming this on the US government and the failure to have a concrete plan when invading Iraq. The economic predictions by the US have also not come about. Paul Wolfowitz said in early 2003, “The oil revenues of Iraq could bring between $50 and $100 billion over the course of the next two or three years. We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon”.

This has not even come close to happening. Six months later Paul Bremer said that current and future oil revenues would be insufficient for rebuilding Iraq. At no time during this war have we seen the US government come up with an estimate of when they will be pulling out of Iraq. As the security situation continues and Iraqi insurgents kill more and more troops everyday, the prediction of General Eric K. Shinseki of several hundred thousand troops is becoming more of a reality. The US needs to set a definitive casualty point at which they will pull troops out of Iraq and hand over to an international peace keeping force to oversee the process till a full government is established. It is only then after a long term plan has been established and been ratified by the United Nations that Iraqi people can enjoy the freedoms that come with democracy.