Iraq & The Ten Conditions For Democracy
...politics since the United States toppled the authoritarian regime of Saddam Hussein in the spring of 2003, and will ultimately become the defining issue of President Bush's legacy. He has often said that the, "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution," and that is a top priority of American foreign policy.
Iraq has had many political faces; from being a territorial pawn in international politics to being a monarchy, then a military regime, and now a young and growing democracy. Iraq first came to be after World War I when the British and French carved up the Ottoman Empire amongst themselves with little attention being given to ethnic, religious and tribal boundaries. The British took over control of Iraq under a League of Nations mandate and set up its political and constitutional framework, which provided for little legitimacy in the eyes of most Iraqis. After an Arab revolt against the British, they installed the Hashemites as Iraq's new royal family; the fact that the British chose a Sunni monarch to rule a country where Shiites-the immortal enemy of Sunnis-are the clear majority shows the cultural insensitivity and apathy of western world superpowers at the time. This single political decision has had profound impact of the politics of Iraq and paved the way for Sunni political dominance and their persecution of Shiites for years to come.
As anti-western sentiments came to a boiling point by the late fifties, General Abdul Karim Qassem overthrew and executed the west-friendly Hashemite royal family and declared that Iraq was a republic. For the next 20 years Iraq's political power shifted several times, but always amongst military men. Although Iraq was formally a republic, its political system provided for minimal, if any citizen participation; it was being run more...
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