Update [2005-8-15 16:30:7 by BooMan]: Here is a better update from CNN.
Update [2005-8-15 16:21:44 by BooMan]: Dexter Filkins now has the story up at the New York Times
It appears the Iraqi interim National Assembly managed to amend the interim constitution and create an additional seven days for resolving outstanding problems in the proposed permanent constitution. Any amendment requires a three-fourths majority. A failure to amend the constitution by midnight would have necessitated the dissolving of the Assembly and new elections. Bush must be letting out a sigh of relief. However, new elections with better Sunni participation would not have necessarily been a bad thing.
It’s just that we have run out of time, and we are more interested in moving the process along, than getting it right.
>>>>It’s just that we have run out of time, and we are more interested in moving the process along, than getting it right.<<<
Isn’t this the fundamental sticking point, that we would want them to draft a constitution according to our concept of the amount of time needed?
We’re running out of time to install a government that will have little or no feedback from the general populace in the drafting of the constitution.
And the real issue for the U.S. is a politically unpopular president at home in a politically unpopular war.
is that the various groups simply cannot find compromises on certain issues. I don’t see how an additional seven days will change the status of Kirkuk, for example.
We want to see any compromise at this point, as long as the timetable moves along. But we cannot even get that.
And how does a country formulate a constitution, using a democratic process, when said country is illegally occupied, when there is an illegal war raging within that country, when its citizens feel threatened no matter where they are?
How can a democracy bloom under such undemocratic conditions? This will be a disaster, because we are wrecking disaster by our actions towards that country.
we can hope for is that the principle of legitimacy through the ballot box is established, and then hopefully, the Iraqis can improve the quality of their elections over time, including making changes to their constitution to correct any flaws.
It will be exceedingly difficult for Iraq to pull this off.
As long as Islam Law is part of the contitution, women will not have equal rights. There will never be a “democracy” as we know it in Iraq…imho.
Yes! This puts the lie to Bush’s idiotic rhetoric about freedom. There can be no meaningful freedom in a society absent equal rights for all.
And whether it’s Islamic, Christian, Jewish, or Hindu law, if it’s enshrined in a constitution it defeats the entire democratic principle, because religious “law” is arbitrary and authoritarian, while democratic, secular law is determined in a participatory process by a majority of those who agree to submit to those laws.
Religious law and democratic law don’t mix; each requires the other to renounce the legitimacy of it’s source’s authority. Each needs to trump the other in order to remain true to it’s ideology.
I should have written “primacy” instead of “legitimacy” in the sentence ; “…requires the other to renounce the legitimacy of it’s source’s…”
So well said!!
” Bush must be letting out a sigh of relief.”
No. He probably knows less about it than we do…
Can you imagine, if Clinton or Carter — or even George Sr. — were president? They’d be so actively involved, making phone calls, etc.
Let’s see. There are evidently 4 major sticking points.
Determining the role of Islam.
Determining the rights of women.
Determining the division of wealth vis a vis Iraqi oil.
Determining whether to grant Shias a semi-independent region in the south.
It strikes me that these 4 issues constitute a foundation upon which much of the rest of any meaningful constitutional principles would need to be based, and for that reason, agreement on these fundamentals is of paramount importance.
The fact that these major issues are still unresolved begs the question; “What, if any, important agreements have these people reached?” I find it interesting that there’s little if any mention of what’s been agreed. (There was an announcement last week that agreement had been reached on the sharing of oil wealth. I was very surprised to hear this, and didn’t quite believe it. Now, evidently, even this is back in the mix again.)
They are operating according to their law, and the schedule previously agreed to under UNSCR 1546. Two years ago they were three discrete regions (North & South protected by the no-fly zones), and nothing has changed that composition.
An accurate description of “Iraq” would be a country formed by lines on a map, drawn primarily by the Ottomans and British empires, at war since the ’80’s, suffering under an occupation force, while simultaneously engaged in internal battles, involving foreign and domestic forces which include criminals, organized crime syndicates, politically disaffected organizations, and outright terrorists.
They have engaged the process of creating a new government out of whole cloth in six months, and yet are publicly derided for their failure to agree on a “national constitution”. They’ve given themselves an extra seven days.
For f*ck’s sake, even GOD took six.
Well, it seems that the right-wingers are arguing that it took us 14 years to get our Constitution, so we shouldn’t be too upset if the Iraqi’s need a few more days. While I agree that a few more days is no big deal, it should be noted that we had the Articles of Confederation agreed to by Congress on November 15, 1777, less than a year and half after we declared independence. And it was ratified and in force on March 1, 1781, before it was even clear who would win the Revolutionary War, and before we were even recognized as a country by many governments around the world.
When our Constitution was written in 1787 it was essentially created from scratch and they did it in seven weeks, starting on July 26, 1787:
It took less than a year to be ratified:
It’s not like the Iraqi’s don’t have plenty of proven sources to make their constitution-making exercise a bit easier. The University of Richmond lists a hundred or so, including constitutions from majority Muslim countries. How about Turkey’s Constitution? It’s not my favorite country, but they do have a consitutional and parliamentary government.
Iraq may have been three “discrete regions” before the war, but we were thirteen colonies before the American Revolution. Imho, they should be able to get it written in weeks, maybe months, not years. Then put it to a vote within the same type of time frame.
So, they have been fighting over it for many months and it’s still not even written and agreed to by the “Iraqi Congress.” So, should we be skeptical yet? You bet. Is it impossible to get it done? Probably not. But if they wait much longer, I don’t believe the timing’s going to get any better.
http://tinyurl.com/b5j5a this is a good overview by Robert Fisk-from truthout.org about the the Iraqi constitution.