Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times reports that the United States is assur­ing the Kuwaitis that there will be no democ­racy in a post-Saddam Iraq because the 60 per­cent Shi’ite pop­u­la­tion would quickly estab­lish dom­i­nance:

Kuwaiti rulers seem to think, based on assur­ances from U.S. offi­cials, that Shi’ite dom­i­na­tion is poten­tially so desta­bi­liz­ing that democ­racy is not even an option for Iraq. As Kuwait sees it, the pos­si­bil­i­ties range from a Tommy Franks viceroy­alty to the instal­la­tion of a Sunni Hashemite king, some rel­a­tive of Jordan’s King Abdul­lah II. Jor­dan already seems to be qui­etly lob­by­ing for this out­come. “Democ­racy is just not in the cards there,” one Kuwaiti offi­cial said.

But this is in direct con­flict with state­ments from national secu­rity advi­sor Con­doleeza Rice and Sec­re­tary of State Colin Pow­ell:

The US will be “com­pletely devoted” to the recon­struc­tion of Iraq as a uni­fied, demo­c­ra­tic state in the event of a mil­i­tary strike that top­ples Sad­dam Hus­sein, said Con­doleezza Rice, US national secu­rity adviser. [Finan­cial Times, Sept. 23, 2002]

and

Pow­ell … told the House Inter­na­tional Rela­tions Com­mit­tee that the United States would seek to per­suade Iraqis that an assault on the Hus­sein regime would bring a “new era” defined by “a gov­ern­ment of Iraqis gov­ern­ing Iraqis in a demo­c­ra­tic fash­ion.” [Wash­ing­ton Post, Sept. 20, 2002.]

So what gives here? Will we sup­port democ­racy on won’t we? Are we will­ing to put up with the unpre­dictabil­ity of the bal­lot box? In a col­umn in the National Jour­nal (avail­able only to sub­scribers, sorry,) Tish Durkin inter­views a num­ber of Iraqi oppo­si­tion fig­ures in Dam­as­cus and comes to the not unrea­son­able con­clu­sion that any pup­pet installed by the United States, even a democ­rac­tic pup­pet, would be “a dis­as­ter.“
The Kurds cer­tainly think a democ­racy is in the cards, what with their pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion and all. Fowzi Hariri, the smooth, British-educated deputy head of the KDP Bureau of Inter­na­tional Rela­tions, told me in July that “We want Bagh­dad.” I didn’t know what he meant by that, but he went on to explain that the Kurds want the chance to hold the office of chief exec­u­tive in a Fed­eral Repub­lic of Iraq. “We want a direct say in gov­ern­ment,” he con­tin­ued. “When­ever we have relied on other sys­tems or peo­ple, we have ended up with a dic­ta­tor­ship.“
That was a thinly veiled barb at the on-again, off-again sup­port from the United States. My sus­pi­cion is that we’re at it again, telling the Kurds they will have a place at the table in order to lure them into com­mit­ting to a fight against Sad­dam while we tell the Kuwaitis, Turks and Syr­i­ans that a messy, unpre­dictable demo­c­ra­tic Iraq is “not in the cards,” as the Kuwaiti said to Kristof. And when the ham­mer hits the anvil, I think we’ll hang the Kurds out to dry.
Again.