A review of The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace by Ali A. Allawi.
About the Author
Ahmed H. al-Rahim has taught Arabic and Islamic studies at Harvard University. In 2003, he served in Iraq as an advisor on political Islam in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance.
If Iraq is successfully to democratize and an inclusive democratic culture is to emerge, the Iraqi state must be reconstituted as a federal and strongly liberal system and thoroughly demilitarized.
Even after its successful elections, Iraq remains a divided society. Democracy did not create these divisions, but it could be the key to managing them.
After almost ten years of complex and costly efforts to build democracy in these two countries, where do things stand? What lay behind the critical choices that shaped events in…
