Tuesday Editorial: Complexities that may not have been considered

One of the most disastrous strategic blunders of this war was the inability of the ideologues inside Bush's war cabinet to recognize the cultural complexities of the Iraqi state.  Within Iraq are three major geographic groups.  There are also sixteen distinct provinces.  There are also hundreds of towns, where some Iraqis have lived for thousands of years.  Within those downs are tribes, where loyalties originate.  Some of the southern tribes, although they are loyal to the Shiite sect of Islam, have been at war with one other for years.  Some tribes are even at war with themselves, putting neighborhood vs neighborhood.  So, as you can tell, bringing Iraq together is quite complicated.

Then there is this issue of democracy.  Those that study political theory understand that in order for a democratic government to be possible, people need to consent to it.  When the people first give their consent to government, it must be because they demand their government to give them security, not because the government demands security from its own people.  So, in order for a democracy to work, it must be populist driven.  Once it is populist driven, then the very top provides the security. 

While keeping all of this in mind, when looking specifically at Iraq, democracy was not demanded in the same way that it was demanded in other states that eventually turned democratic, such as the United States.  In a nutshell, Iraq's democracy is molded from the top-down, not from the bottom-up.  That poses a serious long-term risk for the ability of Iraq's newly developed institutional structure to sustain itself.

Respectfully, I have to ask whether Bush, Rumsfeld or Cheney have ever studied political theory?  Or, an even better question, if they did study it, then what do they remember?