In a lengthy article in the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, Larry Diamond -- coordinator of the Democracy Program at CDDRL and a political adviser to the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq last spring -- details the United States' blunders in Iraq and asserts that the coalition occupation "has diminished the long-term prospects for democracy there."

The article, titled "What Went Wrong in Iraq?" chronicles the U.S. government's miscalculations on several fronts, including its failure to commit enough forces to ensure security in Iraq after toppling Saddam Hussein; Pentagon officials' disregard for the elaborate postwar planning that had been done by the State Department; a lack of determination to face down political threats such as cleric Muqtada al-Sadr; the launching of a de-Baathification campaign that was too broad; a failure to address early on the widespread grievances with the interim constitution that was drafted this past spring; and above all, the U.S. government's failure to understand Iraqi politics, Iraqi society, and the way average Iraqis viewed the United States and its occupation of their country.

Diamond writes that the Bush administration deserves credit for changing its posture after the "rapid implosion of its plan for a political transition in Iraq." And he praises several aspects of the Coalition Provisional Authority's work, such as the training programs it set up to offer Iraqi political parties the skills and tools needed to organize and mobilize. He writes encouragingly that "I have found many Iraqis to have a deep ambition to live in a decent, democratic and free society and found them prepared to do the hard work that building a democracy will require."

But Diamond concludes that because of the failures of the U.S. occupation, along with the intrinsic difficulties of establishing order and democracy in a society like Iraq, "it is going to take a number of years to rebuild the Iraqi state and to construct any kind of viable democratic and constitutional order there."