Blundering Into Bagdad

Check our Larry Diamond's article in the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs. Diamond makes clear that "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." The Reason? "hubris and ideology. Contemptuous of the State Department's regional experts who were seen as too "soft" to remake Iraq, a small group of Pentagon officials ignored the elaborate postwar planning the State Department had overseen through its "Future of Iraq" project, which had anticipated many of the problems that emerged after the invasion. Instead of preparing for the worst, Pentagon planners assumed that Iraqis would joyously welcome U.S. and international troops as liberators. With Saddam's military and security apparatus destroyed, the thinking went, Washington could capitalize on the goodwill by handing the country over to Iraqi expatriates such as Ahmed Chalabi, who would quickly create a new democratic state. Not only would fewer U.S. troops be needed at first, but within a year, the troop levels could drop to a few tens of thousands."

From January to April 2004, Diamond served as a Senior Adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. You can get a glimpse of Diamond's condemnation, in Sidney Blumenthal's short piece in The Guardian.