An Interview With Tom Ricks on the Crisis in Iraq: How Bad Can It Get? | New Republic

An Interview With Tom Ricks on the Crisis in Iraq: How Bad Can It Get? | New Republic: A lot of this is all fruit of the poisoned tree. Maliki is the result of a botched political process that began under Bremer. We went in and said, "we’re going to hold national American-style elections, one man, one vote." And the country had three profoundly different groups who are at each other’s throats. It was insane. At that point, when we wanted one man, one vote, we turned control of that country over to Iran and that’s why it appalls me when you see Cheney and Wolfowitz and Elliott Abrams saying the Obama administration blew it. No, the Obama administration was trying to clean up the mess these guys made, and Maliki results directly from that mess. We should have grown the politics slowly. You start with town councils, district councils, then you go to provincial elections. And then you go, a couple of years later, to national elections. And that way you grow a new generation. Instead, we basically thrust the old class of exiles into power. Maliki is a low-grade Kerensky.