What Went Wrong in Iraq
![handle is hein.journals/fora83 and id is 748 raw text is: What Went Wrong in Iraq
Larry Diamond
BLUNDERING IN BAGHDAD
WITH THE TRANSFER of power to a new interim Iraqi government
on June 28, the political phase of U.S. occupation came to an abrupt
end. The transfer marked an urgently needed, and in some ways
hopefil, new departure for Iraq. But it did not erase, or even much ease
at first, the most pressing problems confronting that beleaguered
country: endemic violence, a shattered state, a nonfunctioning economy,
and a decimated society. Some of these problems may have been
inevitable consequences of the war to topple Saddam Hussein. But
Iraq today falls far short of what the Bush administration promised.
As a result of a long chain of U.S. miscalculations, the coalition
occupation has left Iraq in far worse shape than it need have and has
diminished the long-term prospects of democracy there. Iraqis, Amer-
icans, and other foreigners continue to be killed. What went wrong?
Many of the original miscalculations made by the Bush adminis-
tration are well known. But the early blunders have had diffuse, profound,
and lasting consequences-some of which are only now becoming
clear. The first and foremost of these errors concerned security: the
Bush administration was never willing to commit anything like
the forces necessary to ensure order in postwar Iraq. From the
beginning, military experts warned Washington that the task would
require, as Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki told Congress in Feb-
ruary 2003, hundreds of thousands of troops. For the United States
LARRY DIAMOND is Co-editor of the Journal of Democracy and Senior
Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. From January to
April 2004, he served as a Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional
Authority in Baghdad.
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What Went Wrong in Iraq
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