What are you on about? The Iraqis brought this on themselves? Destroyed by a personality cult got out of hand? And there was me thinking it was Bush and Blair wot did it…

If there was any so called cult of personality in Iraq it was because it was enforced from above. It could be enforced from above because the Iraqi dictatorship was armed, trained, funded and supported by the US and Britain - which specifically supported HIS regime and not the country as a whole (eg through opposition parties or local NGOs).
And since when did Kurdish peshmerga consider themselves Iraqi?

tony blair's bollocks.

who is margaret thatcher?

when paddy pants down went libdems were ruined.

you have the queen dont you idiot.

do you realsie the 'divide and rule' is already ensuring an 'unnameded shia leader for the southern oil fields?

stop this superior talk in the mode of white supremacy.

Get your history straight first before posting shit. But before anything learn some respect for other nations and people.

The point I am trying to make is that just because democracy seems right to us, does not mean it is suitable for everyone.

If a people are culturally attuned to identify with, and have loyalty to, a personality rather than to a set of ideas or policies, then democracy as we see it will fail again and again. Particularly if ill-intentioned outsiders persist in giving an ill-intentioned leader a leg up, as seems to have happened in Iraq.

I recently read a study of how democracy was failing in a recently free ex-soviet satellite state. Culturally the people are taught to memorise and identify with a personal ancestry, part real, part myhthical, positioning their family in a group, within a clan, within a tribe, within a....etc, reciting the names of common ancestors. This even survived the communist years, and this heirarchy of identities engages all their loyalties, hostilities, sense of security, of mutual support etc.

When democracy was introduced it never even occurred to anyone that they should choose candidates on policies, or even on previous performance. It was entirely a question of clan loyalties, with even the most frightful person being followed blindly.

The politics was just a frozen reproduction of these identity structures, riddled with old hostilities and ancestral alliances, and the candidates too saw it only as a question of who you were, not what you did or said. Result - disaster.

All the mechanisms of a democratic state were put in place, but in practice it was an illusion.

Just a little example of how nothing is as simple as it seems.

Unless the iraqis can somehow break out of their own culture, democracy is unlikely to bring them anything really better. What would work best for them would be something accurately tuned to their own culture, but somehow staffed by the very best-intentioned of their people. I don't know what it would be like, but if it involves something islamic they are unlikely to be allowed it.

And anyway, what is democracy? I don't consider that what the US has meets the bill at all. From my viewpoint this massive expenditure of money, and preponderance of millionaire candidates is nothing but corruption, commensurate with what I would expect of a low-grade african state.

Is that what the US wants to export? Must be, its all they know, and they see nothing wrong with it.

All a matter of viewpoint.

Sorry, but I have to frankly say I think that's a load of cultural relativist nonsense.

People in Iraq aren't stupid or easily led. They're quite capable of 'understanding' democracy (as well as any of us do!) and participating in elections, debates, protests etc; provided they don't get shot for doing so.

For sure, some folk will choose to vote for leaders they know/trust rather than voting ideologically. But hey, don't lots of westerners do that too? In a democracy, people can choose to vote on whatever basis they want.

Let me try to be really concise and clear.

For democracy to work a sufficient number of people must vote on policies and/or actual performance of groups and candidates. So that a government knows power will be taken from it if it performs badly.

Not all people. A sufficient number.

If too many votes are cast on (for instance) unchanging clan loyalties then the government is fixed in its composition, safe from removal, and in effect a concealed dictatorship.

How is that nonsense?

Or don't you think it can happen?