http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6370244/site/newsweek/"… No president has faced an agenda of comparable scope. This is not hyperbole; it is the hand history has dealt this generation.
Never before has it been necessary to conduct a war with neither front lines nor geographic definition and, at the same time, to rebuild fundamental principles of world order to replace the traditional ones which went up in the smoke of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon…
… The first national elections scheduled for the end of January are the next step. They should be viewed not as a culmination but as the first and perhaps least complicated achievement in the quest for Iraqi self-government. Democracy in the West evolved over centuries. It required first a church independent of the state; then the Reformation, which imposed pluralism of religion; the Enlightenment, which asserted the autonomy of reason from both church and state; the Age of Discovery, which broadened horizons; and finally capitalism, with its emphasis on competition and the market. None of these conditions exists in the Islamic world. Instead there is a merging of religion and politics inimical to pluralism. A genuine democratic government has come about only in Turkey, paradoxically through the imposition of democratic forms by an autocratic leader. The emergence of democratic institutions and of the arrangements which hold them together cannot be engineered as an act of will; it requires patience and modesty…
… It is particularly important to understand the obstacles to democracy in a multiethnic and multireligion society such as Iraq's. In the West, democracy evolved in homogeneous societies. There was no institutional impediment to the minority's becoming a majority. Electoral defeat was considered a temporary setback that could be reversed.
But in societies with distinct ethnic or political divisions, minority status often means permanent discrimination and the constant risk of political extinction. This is a particularly acute issue in Iraq.
The country is composed of three major groups: Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, with the Shiites representing about 60 percent of the population and the other two groups about 20 percent each. For 500 years, the Sunnis have dominated by military force and, during Saddam's rule, with extraordinary brutality. Thus national elections, based on majority rule, imply a radical upheaval in the relative power and status of the three communities.
The insurgency in the Sunni region is not only a national struggle against America; it is a means to restore political dominance.
By the same token, the political process means little for the Kurds if it does not ensure a large measure of autonomy. The Shiites tolerate the U.S. presence—sometimes ambivalently—to achieve the goal of reversing the historic pattern of Sunni rule and as a first step to Shiite dominance. To what extent they will continue to support our role as the transfer of power progresses remains to be seen…"
Newsweek
November 8, 2004
El Pescador