Evolution of pro-War Iraqi-American

Fascinating piece on Kanan Makiya from International Herald Tribune.

Makiya was a close friend of Iraqi National Congress Leader Ahmad Chalabi. He supported the war and is working on a new book where he analyzes what happened, what went wrong. He is turning the light on himself and his allies.

From the article:

"I want to look into myself, look at myself, delve into the assumptions I had going into the war," he said. "Now it seems necessary to reflect on the society that has gotten itself into this mess. A question that looms more and more for me is: Just what did 30 years of dictatorship do to 25 million people?""It's not like I didn't think about this," he said. "But nonetheless I allowed myself as an activist to put it aside in the hope that it could be worked through, or managed, or exorcised in a way that's not as violent as is the case now. That did not work out."

An interesting point that has not gotten the proper play:

Chief among the culprits, he said, were the Iraqis picked by the Americans in 2003 to sit on the Iraqi Governing Council, many of them exiles, who tried to create popular bases for themselves by emphasizing sectarian and ethnic differences.

And:

Then there is the issue of American policy. "Everything they could do wrong, they did wrong," Makiya said. "The first and the biggest American error was the idea of going for an occupation."