Hoekstra Says Iraq Democracy Strategy Is Doomed to Fail
    By Chris Christoff
    The Detroit Free Press

    Friday 24 August 2007

    East Lansing – The U.S. effort to install a democracy in Iraq within three to five years was a flawed strategy with little chance of succeeding, U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra said Friday.

    The Holland Republican said the Iraq government needs new leadership, but said it's up to Iraqis to change it.

    Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Select Committee on Intelligence, said as the Iraqi government flounders, he's changed his original support for the Bush administration's stated goal of molding a democratic Iraq as a means to stabilize the Middle East.

    Speaking during a taping of Michigan Public Television's "Off the Record," Hoekstra said in a Muslim country dominated by rival tribal factions, western-style democracy is not workable.

    "You've got a culture where democracy is not part of, 'Let's go there,'" Hoekstra said. "It was a stretch."

    He said he met with Sunni tribal chiefs who hold politically sway in Iraq, and concluded, 'They are not looking for a county commission to tell them what to do."

    But Hoekstra said he opposes setting a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. He said Congress and President George W. Bush must decide on a unified course of action that will stabilize Iraq, based on new intelligence reports and a much-anticipated September status report by the U.S. top commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.

    To reach that consensus, Hoekstra said Bush should drop the notion of a democratic Iraq.

    A new National Intelligence Estimate report indicates that the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq has had some success in quelling terrorist violence, but that the Iraqi government is unstable and Iraqi security forces are unable to function adequately without U.S. guidance.

    The report says while Sunni Arab resistance to al Qaeda grows, al Qaeda continues to mount deadly attacks.

    Hoekstra said it was disappointing that other Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria haven't done more to help Iraq rebuild or to help stem the violence.

    Radical Islam remains a real threat to the United States, he said, and that Islamic jihadists are using U.S. presence in Iraq for recruiting propaganda.

    But, he added, "If it wasn't Iraq, they'd use something else."

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    Contact Chris Christoff at cchristoff@freepress.com.

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