Does Iraq Need A Dictator?

This question has been debated in many many locations, especially in political forums. The story below is from an Iraq newspaper and is a prewtty good article to read.

Baghdad, Aug 14, (VOI) – A recent paper released by New York University's Center for Global Affairs (CGA) suggests that a dictatorship is the most likely route for salvaging Iraq and serving the U.S.’s long-term interests. Imposing a dictator for restoring stability to war-torn Iraq and the region is an option rarely adopted by American academics and think tank strategists. However, some debates over alternatives to open-ended U.S. involvement in Iraq have concluded that an authoritarian government is the best scenario. "The best idea we were able to generate - a National Unity Dictatorship (NUD) - is the only plausible route to stability in both Iraq and the region, and one we can make more likely if we choose to. This would, of course, represent the failure of democratization in Iraq, at least in the short term," said Michael Oppenheimer, an associate professor of international affairs at the CGA. Interviewing a number of Iraqi writers and researchers over the conclusion of the paper, the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI) met with Faleh Abdul Jabbar, the director of the Iraqi Institute for Strategic Studies (IIST), who described the paper as a "trial balloon" that does not reflect U.S. policy towards Iraq. Abdul Jabbar indicated that the study can also be viewed as a U.S. plan to "back (Iraqi) military commanders," among whom, it says, a strongman able to end all the chaos in Iraq will most likely be found. "It (the idea of a dictatorship) might also be a proposal from unofficial forces or from a Middle Eastern country like Saudi Arabia, Syria or Jordan. This is not a European way of thinking, it is ours," Abdul Jabbar said in reference to Arab countries. Ruling out the prospect of a dictatorship, Abdul Jabbar explained that it is not possible for a strongman to emerge on the Iraqi political scene at the present time. "The Iraqi army and police are weak and the street is dominated by militia groups. Also, the United States will not agree to this. A dictatorship in Iraq is unlikely," he added. Ahmed al-Muhanna, an Iraqi writer, said that he would subscribe to any solution that may rescue Iraq from the current abyss. Describing dictatorship as "better than the state of chaos dominating Iraq at the present time," al-Muhanna indicated that the scenario outlined in the CGA paper is "impractical," citing the U.S. forces’ "awful crime of dissolving the Iraqi army." Al-Muhanna also indicated that the current Iraqi government has foiled all attempts to establish a "national security force" that operates independently of political parties and factions and can mount a military coup. The CGA paper described the Iraqi army as an important component of the scenario "which must be transformed into a force that is representative of the entire country and strong enough to engineer the most likely path for a NUD to assume power: a coup." Haidar Saeed, an Iraqi researcher, described the U.S. scenario as a "naïve fantasy," which has emerged in the aftermath of the collapse of the American dream for building democracy in Iraq. "The Americans are now facing an Islamic threat and they prefer totalitarian or semi-totalitarian regimes to Islamic parties in power," Saeed said. "Where would a military dictator come from? From a corrupt and collapsed military institution?" Saeed wondered. "Arms in the street far outnumber those used by the Iraqi authority. They are just naïve fantasies," he added.