A prominent Iraq war hawk who urged the Bush administration to oust Saddam Hussein and move quickly to democracy now says that U.S.-sponsored elections occurred too soon.
“I think we need some sort of authoritarian government in Iraq,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, who was an unofficial adviser to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
With the war entering its fifth year and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki struggling, McInerney said Iraq needs more time to set up democratic institutions, such as a functioning police force and justice system, and to bring Sunni and Shiite Muslims together.
“I thought if they were given a chance at democracy they would seize it,” said McInerney, a frequent commentator on the Fox News Channel. “I was fundamentally wrong.
This is their first elected government. They have never had a government that is supposed to help people.”
Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the intelligence community’s warnings about Iraq before the March 2003 U.S. invasion to depose Hussein.
The National Intelligence Council’s 40-page prewar analysis spelled out the obstacles to an elected government in Baghdad.
“The practical implementation of democratic rule would be difficult in a country with no concept of loyal opposition and no history of alternation of power,” the analysis said.
“Forcing short-term political accommodations between competing interests before new patterns of trust had developed could be destabilizing.”
Iraq held its first multiparty election in January 2005 to seat a temporary national assembly.
Some members of the Bush administration view al-Maliki, a Shiite, as weak against Shiite insurgents. U.S. auditors say corrupt officials have poisoned his government. The parliament so far has failed to produce crucial bills on sharing oil revenues and holding new local elections.
Michael Rubin, an adviser to the 2003-04 Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, said a big mistake was accepting the United Nations’ recommendation to elect parliament through party slates instead of letting voters directly choose candidates.
“What I think is the real problem is not that we had elections, but that we created a system of party lists which made politicians more accountable to demagogic leadership than to constituencies,” said Rubin, who warned against the party system in 2004. “As with so much in Iraq, in accepting U.N. advice on how to do elections, we sacrificed long-term stability for only short-term benefit. Now we’re paying the price.”
