“We Iraqis hoped and said to our Arab and Middle Eastern brethren, over and over again, that American mistakes of the past did not have to be repeated in the future,” writes Makiya. “Were we wrong? Are the enemies of a democratic Iraq, the ‘anti-imperialists’ and ‘anti-Zionists’ of the Arab world, the supporters of ‘armed struggle’, and the upholders of the politics of blaming everything on the U.S. who are dictating the agenda of the anti-war movement in Europe and the U.S., are all of these people to be proved right?”
Saturday, March 22, 2003
One of the biggest stories yet to be carried by the mainstream American press is the apparent abandonment of democracy in Iraq post-Saddam. Kanan Makiya, author of “Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq” and a leading Iraqi dissident, penned a savage criticism of the Bush administration’s plans to replace Saddam and his cronies not with democratic government but with American generals and soldiers where Ba’ath functionaries once sat. “The plan, as dictated to the Iraqi opposition in Ankara last week by a United States-led delegation, further envisages the appointment by the U.S. of an unknown number of Iraqi quislings palatable to the Arab countries of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia as a council of advisers to this military government.”