Why Iraq elections can't fix chaos left behind by U.S.

This opinion issued in the CNN website was written by Fawaz A. Gerges, the Emirates Chair in Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He points out interesting facts on why forcing a country to become a democracy does not work by using the example of Iraq. According to the author, the U.S. invasion in 2003 has left Iraq with a dysfunctional system where dominant social groups have fought over the division of power. The disrupted democracy left in Iraq shows no promise of better days for the country. According to the author, “I have not met a single Iraqi who believes that the elections would signal either a new beginning, a different direction, or inject fresh blood in the veins of the cloaked body politic.” The ideological campaign of spreading democracy around the world should be replaced with a commitment to promote a new global order based on the exercise of the right of ethnic groups and nations to self-control their political autonomy if the case was honestly only to improve other countries standards of living and not the true economic reasons behind spreading democracy. 

Link: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/04/30/opinion/iraq-election-gerges/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Mariana Cury

PSC 102