“I can’t wait for the next election (late 2009 I think) as I am pretty sure that this uselss lot will be swept aside.”
That - late 2009 - is less than 24 months away. My guess is that the development of political positions “from the grass-roots up”, will not, by then, bear enough fruit from the local leaders who are stepping up against the terrorists and sectarian insurgents.
They will still - in 2009 - be busy helping to bring to greater success the counter-terrorism task.
The one position they will be in is to begin the process of locally-derived pressure on the current generation of leaders; because they, the local leaders building local consensus with the counter-insurgency operations, will have obtained the status and local leadership role from their communities.
I believe that when a certain level of stability against the terrorists and sectarian insurgents is achieved (it will NEVER END 100%) - and only then - that the natural rise of local leaders and their non-sectarian coalitions will be ready to reach for national roles.
The U.S. job will be most effective if its focus is primarily divided with the greatest amount of constant military focus at the local level in the counter-insurgency operations and only in the final critical analysis securing the people in national leadership roles and the institutions of the national government; only so far as to insure its survival and general functioning. The rest of the job is political and must be built up from the local leaders winning the counter-insurgency and from them into the national institutions. That will take more than 24 months from now to actually begin and more than one election cycle before Iraqi national politics begins to change from being centered on thugish power-holders whose main ambitions are no higher than simply having power for the sake of having power.
Actually, local leaders might get prominence even before the end of this year. There is local elections pending throughout Iraq. No date yet, but I understand that these local council elections have to be done before the end of this year. This is going to be very interesting indeed as there has been quite alot of change in the geopolitical landscape in the last few months, especially in the western sunni areas. This might explain the erratic behavior of some of the sunni blocs in parliament. They know that their dominance is being threatened by new groups in Anbar and elsewhere. So that’s why they are trying hard to achieve as much as they could before they loose prominence.