Curmudgeon,

The problems with Iraq were two fold. First there was a lack of strong institutions, which is true for most developing countries. Also like most developing countries that left the military as one strong force that people turned to to control and run the country. Later the Baath Party became more than just the ruling party but took on the form of a state within a state as it institutionalized itself throughout Iraqi society. When the U.S. came in it took down those two ruling institutions and never built up anything to replace them. U.S. planning was all about getting out as quickly as possible, which was then reversed by Bremer, but he got undercut by U.S. political domestic concerns over elections there that made the White House push for a return to sovereignty and an Iraqi constitution to show progress for the American electorate. The Iraqi constitution was a rushed job that has so many holes in it all the political elites claim they are following it while working against each other. That means today there is no rule of law, no due process, no independent courts, etc. Secondly Iraq suffered from failed state building. The elite that took over Iraq after the British didn't do a good job in uniting the people around the new idea of the Iraqi nation. They followed top down policies that ended up alienating large sectors of the population. Then when Saddam fully took power he destroyed any competing centers of power. That left sect and ethnicity as two of the only issues to organize around. Hence the Iraqi opposition ended up creating ethnosectarian quota systems in their meetings before 2003. When they came into Iraq they wanted the same system, which the U.S. immediately institutionalized with things like the Iraqi Governing Council that had a set amount of seats for Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, etc. The ethnosectarian identity politics that then took over Iraq immediately split the nation because each group saw itself as a victim of the others in the country, which is a sure way to lead to political deadlock and worse insurgency and militias. That's also why there is no rule of law, etc. in Iraq because each political party runs its own ministries, government offices, etc. Those parts of the government are run for the elite's benefits and to increase their patronage networks so that they can stay in power with very little thinking about what's best for the country as a whole. That in a nutshell is why Iraq is so screwed up right now.