Does Ken Pollack realize quite what he's proposing here?
We did meet with a number of top Iraqi policymakers over there and we found exactly what you said, which was absolutely no progress at that strategic political level. These are people who know that if there were really free and fair elections, they might not win nearly as many seats as they have under the current prevailing conditions of a failed state and a security vacuum. I came away from the trip believing it may be necessary to have new elections in Iraq and maybe even a new electoral system that actually could produce a government that is more representative of the Iraqi people, with leaders who actually would be much more willing to make compromises.
So he's suggesting, essentially, that the Americans unilaterally dissolve the sovereign Iraqi government and demand new elections that would be conducted in some theoretically more proportionate way, and which would be more amenable to compromises that would, in turn, rely on marginalizing the country's most powerful parties and thus angering exactly the groups we need to abide by compromises.
What if General David Petraeus just shot himself in the face instead? Wouldn't that have essentially the same effect?
