[Government] Rumsfeld: Democracy Not Such a Great Thing For Iraq

But how do you create such a system that forces compromise when the parties in question have absolutely no intention of EVER compromising with those they deem unworthy infidels? I see your point but feel that it requires a level of maturity and commitment to peaceful coexistence that does not currently exist in the Middle East because the divisions go back for centuries. The only model that appears to work is when you have an authoritarian government externally enforcing order upon the various groups through repressive means. That ain't democracy but it works.

 

Those are business men who are about that all mighty dollar and they don't care who has to bleed to get it. Some of these big corporations like Halliburton made money hand over fist because of that war. Who owns a lot of stock in Halliburton...???

Remember the civil war... The North didn't do much compromising with the South... They kicked that azz and made them do what they were told.

 

The model that forces compromise has not been tested. Not every solution has to be either autocratic or pure democracy.

It was the South who succeeded. But they also did not continue fighting after they lost.

 

And just what entity enforces this compromise? Alien overlords come to mind. Seriously, your idea is most intriguing but I simply don't see how this can be done without the application of some sort of external influence. This concept brings to mind an old episode of the Outer Limits called "The Architects of Fear". In it, a group of wealthy and powerful men created a fake alien out of a human in order to "scare" the nations of the earth into believing that an invasion from the stars was at hand - sort of an intergalactic scarecrow. The thought being that human compromise could only be achieved in the face of a terrifying threat from an horrific enemy from space. It is an interesting concept (where's Gort and Klatu when you need them?).

 

"Hello pot, you sure are black"

-The Kettle

Democracy couldn't do as much damage to Iraq as Rumsfeld if it tried.

 

i dunt trust anything this dbag says. look what he was doing in the 70s and 80s.. just a corporate mililtary industry shill. easy now to say these things but in 2003 almost everyone was too cowardly to say no to the war in the bush group. they were all smiling and pumping up the war. i think only collin powel in that group was openly hesitant about going to war.

 

Bush didn't know or care about anything except pushing a deal through. It was another stadium bond package or dry hole with other people's money and talent to boost his fragile ego and hollow resume. His ineptness was as much of a disappointment and derailment as Clinton's appetites and the time and energy spent cleaning up their messes shouldn't be leveraged into some new narratives. Cheney and Rumsfeld are probably unassailable as businessmen and administrators, but their worldview and strategic outlook died with Nixon and Ford.

 

I challenge the idea that Cheney and Rumsfeld are great administrators. They played fast and loose with intelligence, ignored advice that might've showed were their predictions were wrong, botched the occupation and administration of post Iraq, and also failed to show proper oversight.

I posted these quotes among others from Rumsfeld:
"Arguments of convenience lack integrity and inevitably trip you up.
...
Think ahead. Don't let day-to-day operations drive out planning."
That is good advice for any administrator yet it's clear that Rumsfeld ignored those. If he truly believed that imposing democracy wasn't going to work he sold out his integrity to push for the war. He clearly failed to think ahead for the convenience of prosecuting the invasion rapidly. As he himself said "you go to war with the army you have not the army you wish you had."

I only wish that their worldview and strategic outlook had died with Nixon and Ford. It lived on almost 30 years later and thousands of people paid the price for it.

 

For example, having two houses in Egypt and setting it up so it would be nearly impossible for one party to control both. This could be done by having one based on a popular vote and one based on another criteria. Or having a committee that must approve all legislation that is made up of 3 members from each faction which requires at least one person on another faction to switch sides to get something passed.

The nature of gridlock is how you create forced compromise. Require unanimous agreement on a constitution will ensure a document that everyone buys into and forces the groups to not go for just a complete power grab.

If you set-up the structure so that in order to get anything done requires working with their rival groups - guess what, you end up with compromise.

In Egypt instead you had democracy but as soon as one party won the election, it just power grabbed and became a dictator. If you never allowed one party to have absolute power in the beginning then you wouldn't need constant coups.