Does Iraq even want a secular democracy?

[SHRED]

Has anyone even asked?
All this death and destruction and no one in our media or government even cares to ask this?

[featherman]

1. Who is "Iraq"? Don't make the same mistake as the media in

saying "the Iraqis this" and "the Iraqis that". What the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds all want is different and factions within those main divisions also have different agendas and visions, etc.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. You've got to remember that present day Iraq is a British invention

they cobbled together the country after the betrayal of the Arabs by the Brits and French after WWI, and it was created expressly to include these ethnic and sectarian factions so that the Arabs and Kurds would fight amongst themselves instead of fighting against Britain, which had promised them independence for fighting the Turks during WWI.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I think Chalaby

wanted a leadership post so he could rake in money. I have no clue what the exile community wanted, other than Saddam out. But I don't think the Iraqis in the country have ever really been asked.

[madrchsod]

3. yes they do-they had a decent secular society

before bush erased it. they expected the us army to protect them after the fall of baghdad but bush did`t want to,it was`t in the plan

[Donald Ian Rankin]

7. That's not exactly true.

Before the 2001 invasion, Iraq was a secular, stable, but spectacularly repressive dictatorship. Secular yes, but very definately not decent. And even the secularism was largely enforced by Saddam Hussein, rather than being the wish of the people.

[Robbien]

5. What difference does it make

None to BushCo.
All that is wanted in Iraq is a safe place to privatize all the assets and make the global rich richer.

Everything else doesn't count.

[BayCityProgressive]

6. Does the U.S. even want a secular democracy??

[Spearman87]

8. I don't think we've even said it had to be 'secular'

We've said--I think--that we were giving them the opportunity to build a democracy, but that it would be of their own style and shape. We've attempted to get them to include some civil protections for individual rights, but their constitution I don't think is very much like ours. I know that power is supposed to be much less centrally focussed, making it difficult to get things accomplished if the 3 major ethnic groups are in disagreement.

I would say that they certainly "want" a SAFE, stable democracy at this point. Getting to one from where they are now--a raging sectarian conflict that is being loosely contained, enough to keep it from exploding into a full-blown civil war--that is the 30 billion dollar a month question that no one really knows how to answer.