Larry Diamond on "democracy" in Iraq

Toward the end of my latest criticism of Paul Wolfowitless, I said that "the Bush administration is not really interested in spreading democracy unless it is U.S.-style democracy over which we have influence and control." I published that post on the afternoon of June 14, and then that night Larry Diamond appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Diamond's bio and the description of his book, Squandered Victory : The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, are in the previous post, which focuses on the post-war planning. In the interview, Diamond also made comments which support my claim about the kind of "democracy" Bush wants.

DIAMOND: I went there to advise on the drafting of the interim constitution, and at that point we were starting a new plan–our third or fourth at the time–for political transition in Iraq, bring democracy to the country, so I thought we were there to promote Iraqi democracy, and we were trying, but the third day I’m there and one of my colleagues who had been at a meeting of the Iraqi Governing Council–which we had appointed to try and represent Iraqis–comes into the office at the end of a long day and evening, slams her purse down on the desk in frustration and says, “We have a problem, and nobody wants to deal with it. The Iraqi Governing Council is starting to issue orders, and the ministers are starting to obey them.”

STEWART: That was the problem?

DIAMOND: That was the problem in the minds of the CPA in terms of the way we were looking at the desire to shape and control the situation.

STEWART: We wanted them to have democracy but not to exercise it. We wanted them to have the bearings of it–a car with no engine is what we wanted.

DIAMOND: Well, we wanted democracy, but in our vision, at our pace, with our being able to shape it. You know, the problem we had when I went out there is that the most important religious leader in Iraq, Ayatollah Sistani, was calling for direct elections for the parliament of the country–which has now been elected and is sitting–and the United States was saying “No, we’ve got this wonderful caucus system that we have to elect the Iraqi parliament indirectly.” And so we had the most important Shiite Muslim religious leader of the country saying “we want a directly elected parliament,” and the United States saying “no, caucuses should be okay.”

(emphasis added). And remember, folks, as I said in the previous post, "Here we have statements from someone who not only has firsthand knowledge of what was done and not done in terms of the post-war period, but was personally asked by Condoleezza Rice to go to Iraq."

The nerve of those Iraqis--thinking that democracy entitles them to run their country. Honestly, where do they get such crazy ideas?