Sec Defense Gates: "we probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust" in the Iraqi gov't

[sabra]

Seems like Gates is channeling Condi's "no body ever thought"

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/02/africa/ME-GEN-Iraq-Gates.php

<snip>

"In some ways we probably all underestimated the depth of the mistrust and how difficult it would be for these guys to come together on legislation," Gates said. "The kinds of legislation they're talking about will establish the framework of Iraq for the future so it's almost like our constitutional convention ... And the difficulty in coming to grips with those, we may all have underestimated six or eight months ago."

Gates' comments came a day after six Sunni Cabinet ministers from the Iraqi Accordance Front quit in protest over what they said was Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's failure to respond to a set of demands. Just two Sunnis remain in the 40-member Cabinet, and Maliki Thursday was working to get the six to reconsider.

[Poiuyt]

1. I don't think EVERYBODY underestimated the depth of mistrust

There were about 100,000 people here on DU that could have told him.

[napi21]

2. Is there ANYTHING they HAVEN'T underestimated?

I actually have a LITTLE trust in Gates, but he needs to kick some asses inside this admin!

[EFerrari]

6. "Who could ever have imagined the distrust among Iraqi factions?"

Imagine trying to hold a constitutional convention while being occupied by the British. . . .

[kenny blankenship]

3. Helllooo!! The main parties in Iraq are led by frontmen for the militias who're killing each other!

They have scores to settle that are quite beyond the scope of bourgeois democracy. You can have democracy and equal access to law and legislative institutions in places where people would rather make money on their enemies than kill them. Iraq is highly tribal in organization. Economic life outside a few market areas in Baghdad and other big towns is decided by land ownership which is hereditary and determined by clan ranking. People do not "live democracy" when their economy is pre-bourgeois. Clan leaders and unapproachable war-lords decide who gets what on the basis of loyalty and kinship. On top of that and helping to freeze life in pre-bourgeois conditions you have the paralyzing, stultifying influence of religion. Most of these people are religiously retarded. Just imagine our own Fundies if they represented 90% of the population and had long ago split into followers of Billy Graham versus followers of Pat Robertson and Falwell, and now imagine this 90% of the population has a history of killing each other over their Rev. Graham versus Revs. Robertson-Falwell Schism that goes back a thousand years. What chance would America have of running itself as a democracy under those conditions? Zero.

Can an outside power which thinks in terms of 4 year Presidencies and 8 year epochs (the Clinton years, the Reagan years) impose representative constitutional democracy on a religiously retarded, pre-bourgeois society like this one that thinks of its own history in terms of blocks of centuries? What idiocy, what mind-boggling arrogance. You may as well command the sea to turn back its tide.

The Interior Ministry Police are the Shia Death Squads that left piles of bodies in empty lots, killed by power drills driven into the skull. They emptied out whole neighborhoods in Baghdad with such terror tactics. And you're surprised that there is "distrust" among the different factions in the Iraqi Parliament, and that they can't get together on plans to pick up the garbage and restore utilities???

[trashcanistanista]

4. Kick

:dem:

[KansDem]

5. Is this the "Iraqi government" that the purple-fingered Iraqis voted for?

Wasn't this the crowning glory of Bush's presidency?