Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: L'ideologia americana

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1022-06.htm
Published on Saturday,
October 22, 2005 by Agence France Presse
US Diplomat Points to Neocon
Ideology Behind Actions in Iraq
A veteran US diplomat who served as a government adviser in Iraq says US
policy in the country at the initial stage of the occupation was driven by
neoconservative ideology rather than careful preparation and
clear understanding of issues.
US diplomat Robin Raphel gives evidence to a Senate Committee in April 2004.
Raphel says US policy in Iraq at the initial stage of the occupation was
driven by neoconservative ideology rather than careful preparation and clear
understanding of issues.
Ambassador Robin Raphel, who has been with the foreign service since 1977
and once served as assistant secretary of state,
delivered her unusually candid remarks in a July 2004 interview for a
relatively obscure history program at the US Institute of Peace.
It has remained unnoticed until now, when increasing numbers of Americans
began to question the Bush administration's involvement in Iraq.
Raphel, who served as a trade adviser to the Iraqi government from April to
August 2003, took particular issue with decisions by then administrator Paul
Bremer to launch debaathification of the
country and disband Saddam Hussein's military.
"What one needs to understand is that these decisions were ideologically
based," the diplomat argued.
"They were not based on an analytical, historical understanding.
They were based on ideology.
You don't counter ideology with logic or experience or analysis very
effectively."
She said political pressure on professional foreign service officers was
"huge" and "pervasive."
"The ideology was what has come to be called neoconservatism and the whole
belief that this would be an easy war, that we would be welcomed with open
arms," Raphel pointed out.
She insisted this view was cultivated by expatriate Iraqis, who had their
own agenda, which they tried to impose on US officials.
Raphel said it became quickly obvious to her that the United States could
not run a country that Americans did not understand.
"We were a bunch of amateurs largely except for the engineers, and even they
didn't have a
professional means to interface with the Iraqis, so they were missing," she
said.
"There was very much the sense that we were getting in way over our head
within weeks."
The US diplomat said she believed the administration of President George W.
Bush went into Iraq too soon and it should have waited until the United
States was able to build an international coalition.
"But there were two pressures," she insisted.
"One was the clear political pressure, election driven and calendar driven.
And the other was, the troops were deployed forward for Afghanistan and to
let that kind of fall back and then reenergize everybody is very difficult."
But according to Raphel, it was difficult for professional diplomats to
express their views because of the administration's ideological enforcers
present in the country.
"Oh, yes, there were political people round and about," she recalled.
"One had to be careful."

April to August 2003,
Interessante ..... visto che il conflitto e' iniziato in Marzo ed e'
"finito" in Maggio :)
*ROTFL*
Verrebbe da chiedersi con quale "governo iracheno" *DI FANTASIA*
svolgeva le funzioni di "trade adviser" :)
-Stefano