America's mistakes in Iraq.

Apologies for not posting for a while. I'm having some personal issues that I need to deal with and I wasn't planning to blog today but as I was looking into my blogroll I saw a nice and interesting post at Michael Totten's that changed my mind.I thought I should comment on part of the post, the part I think I know more about than Michael and most of the Americans that were in that company.Michael thinks that the quarrel he and Hitchens had with Ghassan Al Atiyyah was unavoidable and he took Ahmed Al Rikabi's comment to be true, all because of how confusing the relation with America might seem to many Iraqis.While I agree partly on this I see that this is not the main reason. I see that such quarrels are avoidable and such impressions could be changed if they had hosted and seeked the assistance of the right Iraqis. I see this and many complications we had in Iraq that brought many avoidable losses to Iraq and America as America's mistake, in part, as we hold a similar responsibility to.When I say America here, I mean the administration or the people they chose to help Iraqis in their transformation to democracy. While I agree that many regular Iraqis are still misled and have some anti-American feelings as a result of decades of brain washing, I cannot but wonder why should Americans chose such people and trust them in serious issues when there are so many Iraqis who do not suffer from such problems.Ghassan AL Atiyyah happens to be a friend of my father, not a close one though. This man wants to include the "resistance" in the political process in Iraq. This maybe a good cause if it's done to save Iraq from further meaningless violence, but the problem is that Mr. Atiyyah sees that the "resistance" has actually done Iraq good by forcing the Americans to work harder!This reminds me with a conversation I had with a similarly disturbed-minded friend who was hailing the "resistance". I asked him if he wanted the Americans to leave and he replied, "of course not! That would lead to a disaster" and I said, "then why do you support them in killing Americans?" and he said, "it's good for us because when they get attacked they work better and faster in rebuilding Iraq since such attacks would show them they're not doing a good job" I swear to God this was his answer!Now my friend is a simple guy who watches Al Jazeera frequently and thinks it's honest, but would we really want people like him to act as a link between us, Iraqis and Americans?On the other hand Ahmed Al Rikabi who started the popular Radi Dijlah is the kind of guy who sells an advertising time to a stranger for a dollar and to a friend for two, simply because he trust that the friend is not going to question his honesty! Needless to say that the friends could be America, and yes I know this for a fact and through experience.I was asked many times what are America's mistakes in Iraq and I didn't answer for many reasons. First because I'm truly too grateful to count America's mistakes, second because I didn't think this was a policy but rather a mistake out of understandable ignorance and one that would be corrected fast. In my mind such mistake comes from two places; first from underestimating Iraqis and thinking that the only Iraqis that are willing to cooperate are those who can be bought in different ways, even if what they were asked was for their own country's good. And second because it seems that Americans themselves have a mixed feeling about what's happening in Iraq. They think that somehow they did something wrong to Iraqis while liberating them since it meant occupying their country and thus they think it's perfectly natural that even those who cooperate with them should have hostile feelings towards America. It hurts me because it wastes so much valuable time, effort, money and most importantly lives and also because it shows that Americans don't think highly of Iraqis.It's a good policy to try to neutralize those who have problems with their pride (a false sense of patriotism) and it might be good to buy the services of those who are only available to the one who pays the highest price, but it's certainly a bad policy to rely mainly on such people and to take them as representatives of a whole nation.Update: Iraqi reader Abu Hadi comments by mail:On reading your comments section I find many of your American correspondents saying it is not our problem if we didn't know who to deal with in Iraq. This is true because the DOD made sure no Arabists from the DOS got anywhere near their Iraq project. They also threw in the bin that excellent document "Future of Iraq Project" which was produced by many good Iraqis. Hence it is no wonder mistakes were being made.He also mentions another 'mistake' of handling the money for reconstruction but I don't have enough knowledge to judge that and I also don't think there was a big mistake there.However I think Abu Hadi has a valid point here. For almost two years now I haven't met an American who does speak Arabic except for one I saw on TV who was a spokesman for the CPA, and I have met so many Americans during this time.This can't be because there are no, or only few Americans who have good knowledge about the Iraqi society and Arab culture in general. The services of such people would've been very helpful if they had been used. Maybe it's because what Abu Hadi says, a conflict between the DOD and the DOS, but it would be very sad if that's true.