<Remember, it took 13 years for the Americans.>
The people who ran the Revolution, wrote the Declaration of Independence, wrote the Articles of Confederation, then wrote the Constitution, these were people who had previously been elected to colonial legislatures, or chosen by those legislatures to represent their new States. So, the country was run from DayOne, by people with democratic legitimacy.
This is what makes me so pessimistic about the prospects of democracy in Iraq. In the new USA, it was a matter of continuing and enlarging an existing democratic tradition. In Iraq, this does not exist, even in embryonic form. The only hopeful sign, is what the Kurds have managed to do in their enclave.
The Sheik who has just been given civil control of Basra, who elected him? Evidently, he just stepped forward, and the British soldiers had a talk with him, and decided to put him in charge. Is this democracy, or even the first step toward democracy? Once in control, people like this will hold the levers of power, and stay in power. They will be able to hand out jobs, favors, access, aid, patronage. Loyalty will be based on tribe, religion, ethnicity. They will build and defend little local fiefdoms, these StrongMen, who will hold total authority over a people with zero democratic tradition. They may go through the motions of democracy afterward, holding an election which will be managed so that the Iraqis currently being chosen by foreign soldiers, all stay in power. If it happens that way, it will be about as democratic as the elections regularly held in the Soviet Union. And the NeoCons will claim victory for democracy, pointing to the form and ignoring the substance. |
