U.S. Policy in Iraq
DOCUMENT IN CONTEXT
All of the shortcomings of the George W. Bush administration’s policies in Iraq
appeared to coalesce in 2006 when sectarian violence exploded into a civil war and
the new government—created through U.S.-sponsored elections—proved unable to
overcome increasingly dangerous sectarian divisions. In the United States, voters sig-
naled their unhappiness with Bush’s Iraq policies by stripping his fellow Republicans
of control of Congress. An independent, high-level commission recommended subtle
but important changes in these policies, and Bush acknowledged in January 2007 that
the situation in Iraq had become “unacceptable.” Rather than withdrawing from Iraq,
however, as many Democrats and even some Republicans were urging, Bush chose to
increase the U.S. military presence there, at least in the short-term, in hopes of calm-
ing the violence in Baghdad so Iraq’s government could gain its footing.
Before the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Bush administration had assumed that
the removal of the country’s autocratic leader, Saddam Hussein, would unleash the
pent-up desire of Iraqis for democracy, which in turn would overcome any linger-
ing resistance on the part of minority Sunni Muslims, who had formed the base of
Hussein’s government. Iraqis did exhibit a desire for democracy, or at least elections,
but their expectations for democracy proved different from what planners in Wash-
ington had assumed. For the majority Shiites, democracy meant having political
power for the first time. For many Sunnis—reluctant to acknowledge their minor-
ity status—democracy meant trying to hold on to the power they had exercised for
centuries. For the other large minority, the Kurds, democracy meant controlling their
own destiny in the three northern provinces they called Kurdistan—preferably out-
side Iraq as an independent country, but inside Iraq, with a great deal of autonomy,
if necessary.
These differing expectations influenced the course of events as the United States,
with help from the United Nations, negotiated and then implemented a process
of holding elections and forming numerous governing structures in the years
after the 2003 invasion. Just as important, the fact that Iraqis did not share a uni-
versal vision of the country’s future meant that some of them would try to reach
their own goals via violence, the customary route of the past (Iraq’s New Govern-
ment, p. 526).
Violent opposition to the U.S. occupation of Iraq began to spread in the summer
of 2003 after the Bush administration’s representatives in Baghdad dismantled the mil-
itary and the Baath Party—the key elements of Hussein’s former power structure. At
first, officials in Washington blamed the violence on criminals and “dead-enders” from
the overthrown regime. Bush even appeared to invite these opponents to throw them-
selves against the U.S. military. “There are some who feel that the conditions are such
that they can attack us there,” he said on July 2, 2003. “My answer is: bring ‘em on.
We’ve got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.” Later in 2003, after
a series of high-profile bombings that targeted the United Nations and Iraqis working
532 IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS