The American Revolution, as described by Sellers, May, and McMillen (38-39), represented the culmination of years of struggle on the part of a colonial people to obtain parity with the "mother country." The process of revolution in the United States pitted 13 relatively small colonies against one of the most powerful empires the world has ever seen - that of Great Britain - which had a vested interest in retaining autocratic control over the affairs of its colonies in America. The American Revolution occurred in an era in which the philosophy of the Enlightenment and new ideas regarding liberty and equality were inflaming the passions of men and women (Norton, Katzman, Escott, Chudacoff, Patterson, and Tuttle, 91-93).
When one compares the American Revolution to the process of democratization currently talking place in Iraq, one quickly realizes that there is no valid comparison between these two processes. The only synergy between the American Revolution and democratization in Iraq is focused on the kind of government created in the United States and the one that is being developed in Iraq.
O'Sullivan (72) examined democratization in the Middle East, focusing on Iraq, and noting that the impetus to democratize in Iraq was not indigenous to the Iraqi people. O'Sullivan (72) asserts that democracy is a flexible concept and that the American model is not the only model. Israel has a democracy, but the democracy in the United States is structured so that elections for the president are held every four years whereas in Israel and other democracies, governments can be subject to a vote of confidence and lose power at any time. O'Sullivan (73) argues that democracies, regardless of some of their governmental forms or practices, share certain essential features. These include universal suffrage, representative government, an independent judiciary, a military that is subordinate to civil authority, a free press, freedom of...