American Revolution and Iraq Democratization

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

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of removing Hussein from power. Harrison (9) noted that the United States and anti-Saddam Iraqis faced a challenging situation due to the "longstanding hostility between the majority Shi'ite and the minority Sunni and between those to two sects and the Iraqi Kurds." The ethnic and sectarian diversity in Iraq made it and still makes it extremely difficult for democratization to go forward. The largely Anglo colonials who rebelled against the British crown in 1775 were in no way as diverse and did not have to cope with the kinds of infighting and struggle for power that have arisen in Iraq since the overthrow of the Hussein regime. Weede (219) questions whether or not democratization can succeed in Iraq and suggests that the democratic peace proposition does not promise that poor, emerging, and illiberal democracies that find themselves surrounded by autocratic countries are inherently more peaceful than autocracies. While there may well have been a general consensus among the leading figures in the American Revolution on Enlightenment ideology, no such consensus can be identified in Iraq today (Sellers, et al, 37). Shi'ites and Sunnis there are still hostile to one another and no one has been able to deal effectively wi

Category: Government - A