Hey, the "Iraqi constitution" never stopped them from deregulating all of the constitutionally protected socialized sectors of the Iraqi economy and selling them to US and UK companies at pennies on the dollar prices.
Why should this be any different?

Democracy in Iraq is going to take time. Saddam and the Baath party were in power for around 30 years. Any Iraqi under 30 has never known any other government. Then US itself didn't have a constitution for over 10 years after the revolution.

RIght now the elected government is pretty much whoever the Imams of the various sects recommended. Each group is looking for dominance and control instead of working toward shared goals and protecting differences. I would consider that a normal outcome of 30+ years under the thumb of a minority group.

Democracy in Iraq can work. It will just take time and education.

Since when did Bush start caring about education? Let's face it, if the US is not going to bother educating the people of Iraq on why democracy is good, who the hell will do it?

Imposing democracy doesn't work, and when it democracy does and the people elect representatives unpaletable (i.e. Iran 1953, Australia 1975, Hamas 2004-whenever) to the powers that be, all the stops go out the door in ensuring that the 'people' get it 'right' the next time. Democracy can work in Iraq, given time and education, but it is not strategically desirable for the main players in the arena (the US and EU arms manufacturers, Iran, Israel, the Bush regime, Chinese communist party, und weiter...) The conflict is just too profitable financially and it is advantageous politically to incumbent administrations. Americans should get used to their young men and women's blood being poured out like dishwater on the streets of Iraq, and the American taxpayer's hard earned going to fund the shareholders of several large international corporations rather than health care and education for the people of the USA.

The US military have been building permanant facilities to secure their strategic investments in the Middle East http://www.fcnl.org/iraq/bases.htm

+

p.s. My support to the civilians, soldiers and their families stuck in a situation who want what's right. Don't die and kill for someone else's powertrip

No hat tip to Crooks and Liars?

Democracy doesn't even work in the United States. Its an out dated system of government that started out great and is now just as corrupt as any other government. So what right do we have to try and push it on any other country?

It's not that I disagree, in fact I think that the example I'm giving is rather extraordinary, but imposing democracy has worked before, at least once.

First, the United States government never started being corrupt, because it was corrupt from the very beginning. It started out great and still is, with problems that some day will be addressed. The current administration is more corrupt than usual, or at least more visibly corrupt, but that is by no means a first in this country's history. (Countries? countrys? I'm not even sure how to look that up). Don't worry, things haven't fallen past the point of no return here quite yet.

At the same time I completely agree that we have no business shoving democracy down another country's throat. Something like half of our eligible voters actually participate in the democratic process, that's not exactly a shining endorsement.

Ya think?

Christ, people like me have been saying this since 2003 when Bush started this bullshit.

Democracy - at least American style democracy arose from circumstances, mindsets, philosophies and movements that have no counterpart in the Middle East. Democracy cannot simply be transplanted, without also transplanting the culture that engendered it - and the societies of the Middle East explicitly reject western culture or at least our political culture.

30 years? Try 100.

By then of course, they will be exporting democracy to the west,. given the rate at which we are backpeddling away from it.

Well, it depends on what you consider 'corrupt'. There were new ideas regarding the self determination of man, and there were also a bunch of learned rich white guys who --when it came down to it-- were still under the thumb of a king.
They put two and two together and figured out a way to wrestle control of a huge portion of the economic sector of the British empire, for themselves while also attaining the goals of personal political philosophies.

It's all about the Benjamins.

plus one to NIcks points I belive that the Iraqi people need to figure this out on there own and we need to get our troops our of there....I'm not for "cutting and running" leave some important people behind to lead them in the right direction and maybe a battalion or two but thats all.

I would argue that Iraq could easily have become a democracy after Saddam had the America government adopted reasonable policies, attempted to meet the needs of the populace, and not been such a poor representative of the West. Iraq was one of the Middle Eastern countries to have a modern secular government. In 1958, they had a Western legal code, based on the model of the French Code (which was not a remnant of colonization).

Despite common perceptions of the Iraqi populace, strong democratic movements existed in Iraq from the late 1950s up through the Ba'thist period. Even under the Ba'th, these democratic opposition groups (the Iraqi Communist Party in particular) occasionally forced democratic concessions and institutions, such as in the Crisis of 1973. From this time until 1978, the government included the ICP as a legal opposition party. While most Communist Parties around the world were definitely not democratic, the ICP was indeed a genuine democratic party. This fact is likely because of a lack of direct control from Moscow and the failure of any bourgeois-liberal parties to attract members after the failure of Western-model Liberalism to solve the problems of Arabs in the 1920s and 1930s.

Indeed, the ICP was historically able to mobilize more people for protests and demonstrations than the Ba'th ever was. My point is not that the ICP in particular was popular, but rather, that the democratic alternative to Ba'thist rule had strong resonance with large segments of the population. The barriers to democracy in Iraq are not due to a lack of democratic sentiment in the population, but rather, due to failed US policy.

In our de-Ba'thization campaign, we removed party members from posts throughout the country (modeling our policy on de-Nazification). This act, unfortunately, removed the majority of the middle classes from professional roles (such as teachers, professors, engineers, etc.) because those individuals in those jobs had to join the Ba'th due to cadre-ceilings. By disenfranchising the middle classes to a large extent, we alienated one of the groups most traditionally aligned with democratization. By failing to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure in a meaningful way (and removing the Iraqi professionals who could rebuild infrastructure themselves), we also alienated the Shia poor - the other strong support base for democratic politics in Iraq. Along these same lines, our inability to rebuild the country in a meaningful way meant that we didn't set up conditions that would encourage many Westernized Iraqis living abroad (in the US/Europe) to return to the country and reinvigorate democratic sentiments among the populace.

I am not sure what the best estimate is for when democracy will come to Iraq. Our repeated failures have crippled the democracy movement and radicalized many people to adopt Islamic Fundamentalism as a form of nationalism. The picture looks pretty bleak to me. I am hoping that the 30 year estimate is more accurate than the 100 year one, though.