Today is a big day in Iraq. It’s also an interesting day. According to law, the parliament should be dissolved because they failed to either pass a proposed constitution by midnight last night, or vote to pass an extention. Instead, they just decided to negotiate one more day.
Sunni negotiators today said the issue of federalism remained the key sticking point in the process.
Earlier today, after the latest deadline to complete the constitutional draft fell by the wayside, parliamentary speaker Hajim al-Hassani announced a one-day extension in talks on the new constitution – a fourth attempt to win Sunni Arab approval.
Ireland Online
Here are the key sticking points and problems:
:::flip:::
The Shiites dominate the parliament and make up the majority of the population in the southern part of the country. The have put language in the constitution that would allow them to create an autonomous zone (much like the Kurds enjoy in the north).
NY Times
There are a variety of reasons why this provision should worry us. Most of the oil in Iraq is in the southern part of the country, much of it near or bordering Kuwait. The other big source of oil in near the city of Kirkuk in the north. The Kurds are trying to fold Kirkuk into their autonomous zone. If Iraq becomes split into three essentially autonomous zones, the central Sunni Arab portion will not have much, if any, oil and will be landlocked as well. It may prove difficult for anyone to govern such a dispossessed and dependent Sunni Arab zone.
But it may not come to that. There is a provision in the constitution that says that it will not be be considered ratified if any three provinces reject it. The Sunni Arab population has a majority of the population in three or four provinces. If they stay unified, the constitution could be rejected. And there is good reason to fear the Sunni Arabs will remain unified:
Maybe the Shiites can compromise a little on this one today. If the Shiites cannot get an agreement from the Sunnis, they plan to use the constitution they have already agreed to with the Kurds. The vote over the constitution is scheduled for October 15th. If it passes, there are parliamentary elections scheduled for December. If it doesn’t pass we are back to square one, and our ability to draw down our troops will probably be impaired.
At this point, our interests are probably best served by the constitution being passed and elections being successfully held. This will probably result in some things we won’t like. Women’s rights will be curtailed. The most powerful zone, the Shi’a south, will probably be heavily aligned with Iran. And, as I said, the central Sunni Arab zone may prove to be ungovernable. That will have bad implications for Baghdad, and the country as a whole.
However, there is no substitute for the legitimacy that a constitution and elections will provide. It will be clear that we did not control the process or get a result that we desired. That should add an extra measure of legitimacy. If there is any hope for a peaceful future in Iraq and a prompt drawdown of our troops, a ratification of the constitution on October 15th is probably our best bet.
So, today is a big day and Bush seems to understand this:
Reuters
The problem is that the Sunnis do not see a happy future under the proposed constitution. Their freedom to vote may be coupled with an alienation from and dependency on the central government. They will not have any obvious source of revenue comparable to the southern and northern oil fields, or the harbors and other major trade routes. And they fear being dictated to by religiously conservative ayotollahs.
Bush seems to understand this too. But there is not a lot he can do about it:
“The Americans are very angry that the Shia are not agreeing on this,” the Iraqi official said. “They really want them to make these concessions to the Sunnis to keep them on board.”
“They think that without keeping the Sunnis on board, many things will go wrong, including the security,” the official said.
NY Times
For fun, read this prophetic editotial from spy novelist, John le Carre, circa January 2003.
If you think that’s fun, try “The Constant Gardner”– Don’t wait for the movie– READ THE BOOK!– now that’s fun!
billjpa@aol.com
because I ordered it this morning.
Seems to me that GW. let a big genie out of the bottle. Apparently he didn’t know the genie existed when the war was launched.
If the constitution, as it exists today, passes then the Muslim Fundamentalists in the south and the Kurds in the north control the oil. Can you see us living with $10.00 a gallon here?
If the constitution does not pass in October, then we are back to square one, and this whole thing starts all over again. I’m sure just as peacefully as the first go around. Meanwhile, if what I read is correct, our military has exhausted itself in Iraq. There will be a real manpower shortage by next summer, and the officer corps is resigning to take jobs in the private sector at an ever increasing rate.
No wonder Ms. Sheehan asks her question and GW. does not even try to answer!
Exhausted? By any measure the U.S. military still has adequate forces to complete most missions. But you’re right, the draining of the officer corps, and low retention rate is worrisome.
$10 a barrel? Nah. First you will see Hugo Chavez to the rescue. I’m not even kidding.
I’m looking forward to a price war that finally cuts into the gouging (Hugo has implied as such). If gas was really this expensive on the supply side, don’t you think the oil companies might start LOSING money, instead of raking it in in massive gobs, as never before?
Welcome to the California Energy Crisis on a national, if not global scale. CA was just a practice run, a test to find the methods (they tried ’em all) to best profit upon contrived shortages (‘Get Shorty’) and price manipulations through production/refining shut downs (‘Death Star’). And where does the money land? Off shore..
Makes you wonder if privatization as a rule is really that wonderful of a practice in light of a world of dwindling resources and the amorality of the power players..
Markets must be free, and people must not. This is the golden rule of the Administration, and unfortunately, the DLC. You really want change you gotta brush off this petty “look and W suffer” stuff and really make the changes we need to now that we have a chance. We need to finish the re-taking of the Democratic Party before the DLC goons have a chance to get in office again.
I don’t care if Hillary is a woman. Don’t vote for her, whatever you do.
Everyone seems to be missing one major point: Oil and Constructions contracts created during the provisional authority period are binding by international law when the constitution passes. The UN has already done it’s part when it recognized the new gov’t many months ago (step one in icing the contracts), now if only there were a gov’t in Iraq…
That is the elephant in the room. Many in Iraq think that, like Israel they might just be better off without a real constitution, and for many of the same reasons. But one huge one is why uphold contracts that weren’t even negotiated by one of your country’s representatives?
See that great Harper’s article – “Iraq Year Zero”
Follow the money, the rest is window dressing.
As in any other sovereign nation, a newly formed government can simply abrogate and renegotiate any and all contracts signed by the previous government. Not a pretty sight to be sure, but it is their country.
but they can be sued and sanctioned for doing it.
Vast difference between “can” and “would” or “will be”. Beside the obvious fact that the contractor’s have “failed to perform”, I suspect very few of those contracts would withstand an audit.
oooh, but if they did.
Consider the fact that the guys who get all the money flowing around over this stuff make theirs in the transactions, even if it all goes to hell. As long as there is a ‘ghost of a chance’ money will still be flying around…
War is rad in this way! That’s why we’ll be there for as long as possible and keep things as instable as possible. Tax payers will pay and pay. But who are they paying? Did you pay your taxes last year? If so, don’t complain too hard..
While I’m not really clear on what “our” (US) interests are supposed to be in Iraq, several things seem abundantly clear. One is that the idiotic invasion of that country has virtually guaranteed that whatever we choose to define as the so-called War on Terrorism will be a bloody long term conflict lasting several decades.
Two, it appears that every major policy implemented by the Bush regime vis a vis Iraq has been extremely counterproductive, diametrically opposed to their stated objectives. I would challenge anyone to point to one single main policy implementation that has not made things worse in Iraq.
Three, despite the grandiose rhetoric, there seems to be no evidence that Bush regime policy supports actual democratic and/or human freedoms either in Iraq or anywhere else. They seem all too willing to sellout human rights at the drop of a hat in the name of keeping to their arbitrary timetable for elections. (It’s interesting that the Bush gang is so adamantly against setting timetables for everything else except this constitutional electioneering stuff, and the fact that they are pushing a timetable on this actually exacerbates the problems rather than ameliorating them.) The hypocrisy on this score by BushCo is astonishing in it’s scale.
Four, as Pat Lang so clearly articulated the other night on “Hardball”, there is a difference between the insurgencies in Iraq and the jihadi killers. As he said, we’ll never defeat the jihadis in Iraq; they’re a problem that needs to be dealt with on a global basis. With this in mind, the continued refusal of the Bush regime to de-link the insurgency from the terrorism phenomenon guarantees their approach to problems in Iraq is destined to fail. Wesley Clark made a remark, (I forget where I read it), that, despite the Bush rhetoric of “staying the course” and being “resolute”, that “resolve” alone cannot solve the problems we face in Iraq. One can have all the resolve and support from one’s own countrymen , (Think General George Armstrong Custer), and still suffer catastrophic defeat if ones strategies and tactics are ineffective for the task at hand.
Five, I continue to believe that instability and conflict are the true goals of the Bush regime in Iraq and elsewhere in the MidEast. Bush himself doubtless doesn’t realize this himself, mainly because he’s not smart enough to see it, and because he’s only the figurehead for the agenda implemented by Cheney and his neocons. I believe that Civil War in Iraq is exactly what Cheney & Co wanted all along, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary.
“The Americans are very angry that the Shia are not agreeing on this.”
The Sunni were kicked out of power by the USA. A people conducting an effective insurgency against Christian invaders.
Americans so wrapped up in their ideology, white man’s burden and hubris that they don’t even know their enemy. So clueless, they are angry at a people fighting a peoples liberation movement against their domination instead of kowtowing and kissing the soles of their feet.
This is a comment that I wish I could edit or delete since it was written in a moment of emotion and not enough coffee. The basic premise is correct, Americans are clueless and cannot understand why the Sunni and Shia are not following the path to wisdom and enlightenment set forth by their masters.
NYT reporter Dexter Filkins said what happened yesterday is much more serious than media reports suggest. He’s there in Baghdad and had this to say on the Newshour last night:
You can listen to the Real Audio of the interview here.
On a legal note, Aug. 1 was actually the last chance to extend deadlines. If the deadline extension was not requested by Aug. 1 and the assembly could not reach agreement by Aug. 15 it was to be dissolved at that time. It’s clearly written in the Transitional Administrative Law.
Also, amending the TAL the way it has been is itself unconstitutional as it is defined in Article 3(A). One exception is the “holding of elections to a new assembly.” But in this situation the TAL is being ammended to prevent the holding of elections by extending the deadline. But we’re well past all that now.
My personal feeling is that the Iraqis should have been allowed to take as much time as they needed to create a constitution that works for them. These arbitrary deadlines are now being pushed by the Bush administration to a) avoid more embarrassment from their failed Iraq policy, and b) have something they can point to as a success to stop the bleeding in the polls. But what this approach has done is created high expectations and false hopes that are not realized, which adds to the already high frustration level of ordinary Iraqis.
According to FIlkins, the constitution may now just bypass the National Assembly and be put to a vote by the Iraqis and the majority Sunnis will be urged to vote it down.
At this point, our interests are probably best served by the constitution being passed and elections being successfully held. This will probably result in some things we won’t like. Women’s rights will be curtailed.
I cannot find a way to rationalize this as being acceptable. Regardless of any “extra measure of legitimacy” gained at the expense of women’s rights, I cannot get my head around how “our interests are probably best served” by the creation of yet another ‘legitimized’ government that is openly hostile to women’s equality.
Whose interests are best served? Which interests are best served? Why is it acceptable to even consider trading Iraqi women’s rights for American interests — particularly in this context where “American interests” are, for all intents and purposes, practically defined as the interests of BushCo? (Which interests are of course not the interests of Americans in general.)
I know I sound pissed off, and that’s because I am. It makes my fucking blood boil that nearly every pragmatic conversation even we liberals have amongst ourselves about resolving complex power conflicts somehow has to include the step of legislating fewer rights for women. I mean, that is seriously fucked up.
(I know BooMan’s not anti-woman and I’m totally not saying he is, so people please don’t jump down my throat about that.)
is that we are faced with opposing values. The Shiites in Iraq have oppressed, while the women have enjoyed more rights than any other Arab women.
Now those roles are being reversed.
The majority of the voters in Iraq are Shiites and they are more conservative about gender roles and rights than the Sunnis and the Ba’athists.
We also can’t dictate to the Iraqis at this point because we no longer have any control over the process.
Are you willing to do what it would take to make sure that women’s rights in Iraq get protected?
It’s tragic, but maybe women can make their voices heard in the elections.
We’re always faced with opposing values — that’s one of the pre-conditions that gives rise to the cultural innovation of government in the first place. The short answer to these kinds of problems is always about which lesser-power group is going to be categorically screwed such that two+ more powerful groups can enjoy their power in their preferred manner. It strikes me as more outrageous than I have the words to express just how often the categorically screwed group is comprised mostly or entirely of women, and just how often people basically just shrug and go, “Yeah that sucks but what else are you gonna do.”
Really, I cannot understand how anyone sees the subjugation of women anywhere as a tolerable sort of tragedy. Because fuck yes I am willing to do what it will take to see that women’s rights are protected in Iraq as well as anywhere else on the fucking globe. (And just for the record, I think promoting and protecting equality can be done with far less violence than we are currently employing to protect oil, but that’s a much longer conversation.)
Women are not objects. Despite our having been forced to play the role through much of the history of western civilization, women are not essentially commodities to be exchanged for negotiative purposes between men making varying sorts of contracts. But women are still being used this way because not enough people question it. It will not stop until enough people oppose this treatment of women. Trouble is, enough people don’t. Enough people consider “women’s rights” expendable, therefore they remain so.
Which is partially why I say that the short answer is inadequate. We need to have the conversation that generates the long answer — at least amongst ourselves, we liberals need to be having this conversation. The long answer I have in mind will actually address the underlying reason why liberals allow conservatives (wherever they are) to continue to use women’s equality as a fucking bargaining chip in various political negotiations, and the way I see it, many of the recent big conflicts within the liberal blogosphere have happened (and will keep happening) because we continue to avoid having this conversation.
None of which is to say that I mean to be as harshly critical of your position on Iraq, BooMan, as I probably sound like I am. I disagree with you but my rage is not directed at you.
we don’t have a bargaining chip.
We said we wanted a democracy. Well, if we are lucky we are going to have a democracy of sorts. Unfortunately, the people of Iraq are likely to vote for leaders that want to make the civil law more attuned to shariah law. We can’t force them to vote for feminists and secularists. We can’t make them put women’s right into their constitution. And if we tried we would be undermining the legitimacy and independence of the document and the elections.
Are you really willing to do what it would take? Because I think it would require ripping up the current process, having a draft, and putting our jackboots on the throats of the majority shiites.
First let me reiterate a point I already made, which is that I absolutely believe that promoting and protecting equality can be done with far less violence than we are currently employing to promote capitalism and protect oil.
As I also already said, though, that’s a much longer conversation, and I don’t want to get too far astray from my original point, which was less about the specifics in Iraq and more about the way in which we (‘we’ meaning liberals) discuss approaches regarding the issues of the day, whether those issues are the war in Iraq or election strategies for upcoming political battles at home. I didn’t make this clear enough initially, and I apologize for any confusion.
Look, I’m not saying that you’re not right, in a sense. I’m saying that I wish you would change your conceptualization/language when you discuss it, because the shitty state that women are in globally won’t change until enough people stop just fucking assuming that we can’t change it. When we liberals have strategy discussions, we should always and already be trying to make strategy that leads to equality. We should never cave on equality.
You say:
And in a pragmatic sense, I agree. Of course we can’t make them vote for feminists and secularists and put women’s rights into their constitution — I mean, fuck, we can’t make our own damn country vote for feminists and secularists and put women’s rights into our own constitution. We’re working on it, but we can’t do it yet. But that’s tangential to my primary point.
My primary point is that as liberals, we do share certain values, and equality is one of our core principles, non? We fight for liberal politics in part because we believe in equality in a deep and meaningful way. If this is true, then no strategy discussion amongst liberals should ever include the idea that “our best interests” are served when yet another constitution is drafted that codifies women as lesser subjects, even if this codification is not expected to be permanent. At least among liberals, these discussions ought to be framed in terms of equality (for any identity group) never being optional, ever, anywhere, for any goddamned reason.
a framer. I’m not going to frame my arguments. Our options suck. Our number one interest is getting the fuck out. The best case for us getting out is for the constitution to get approved and for the elections to happen. That would be true, and is true, irrespective of anything that is or is not in the constitution.
It’s part of the general clusterfuck called the Iraq War.
I’m not making a framing complaint. I genuinely believe that the way people craft their sentences reveals things about the way their consciousness is structured. And I am always concerned whenever any liberal makes any sentence about women’s equality that doesn’t immediately acknowledge the lack of it as a dealbreaker.
Fwiw, from reading your posts over time, I get the sense from you that: 1) you’re not a sexist; and 2) you are a reasonably skilled philosophical thinker who honestly wants to further equality; but that 3) you do not have much background in feminism or feminist theory and so tend to accidentally overlook important aspects of the fight for equality. Engaging you in this conversation today was just about hopefully trying to get you to look a little more critically at that last thing. (And it was about ranting to let off some steam, so let me also thank you for providing a forum in which I can do that.)
Finally, again just for the record and fwiw, I totally agree that all of our options suck and that we are in a clusterfuck of grandiose proportions.
describe myself as an expert on feminist theory although I did study it as part of my philosophical studies in college. And maybe I do have blind spots. But my point inre Iraq is that we are not selling out women, we are losing a war.
Bush actually did try to protect women’s rights and was unable to do so. I would be willing to agree that he didn’t place women’s rights at the top of his priority list, obviously. But the loss of women’s rights in not by design, rather it is symptomatic of a more general catastrophe.
And lastly, the Shi’a are very influenced by their religious leaders who have provided most social services for them for centuries. So, democracy in Iraq involves an expression of the general will, and we don’t like the flavor of their general will.
But the loss of women’s rights in not by design, rather it is symptomatic of a more general catastrophe.
I think BushCo quite purposefully deprioritizes women’s rights whether at home or abroad. So even though I more or less agree that the loss of women’s rights in Iraq was not a primary goal of BushCo’s invasion, I’d certainly hold BushCo more directly responsible (w/r/t women) for those specific effects of their twisted ideology + military action, as it was foreseeable and still they barrelled ahead. Further, I saw no indication whatsoever that the admin tried to protect women and were unable to. I did see bullshit lip service to this end, though, and that’s one of the things that I think some additional gender theory reading/critical reflection would probably help you to more easily identify. You give them credit they do not deserve, imo, and this is one of the things that means you and I have a somewhat different analysis of the specifics in Iraq (even though we quite agree generally).
However, again, my point is not really about the clusterfuck in Iraq. It’s about political organization and strategizing amongst liberals. Iraq is just the topic I used to try to get to the underlying gender trouble dynamic. We know we have gender trouble these days, it’s patently obvious that feminists are pissed at Democrats en masse, and I doubt you’d argue that point.
Feminists are threatened and pissed because there is an active, ongoing campaign by our political opponents to roll back women’s rights, and so far, the Democratic response to this has been largely to try to compromise on the rollback. As if equality is an issue for compromise. So if liberals are sitting around talking strategy and someone starts talking about how women’s equality can be trumped abroad by other interests, then anyone with even a half-assed understanding of the history of the women’s movement is going to be fucking terrified because they understand the fallout from that perspective to be much bigger than it looks at first. It means different things in different contexts, but it always means that women’s equality isn’t safe at home either.
Personally, I think we’re all pretty majorly fucked in the global sense if we can’t get the GOP out of power in the next couple of elections. I don’t think we can get rid of them unless we can heal some of the fissures and chasms on the left such that we can form more effective & powerful coalitions, and I think we need to deal with the gender trouble in order to mend those fences. It will be a fuckload of work, but if we do it, everyone will benefit.
last portion of your comment I agree fully. My answer is that we can’t just rely on the netroots because some of the netroots are joining cause with the pragmatists that are willing to bargain away women’s rights. At the same time, even if this takes place, there will come a time when we have to join ranks (probably after our nominee is selected in 2008). The battle is between now and then.
But on Iraq, Bush has pushed for women’s rights in Iraq. He finally caved this week. It is patently obvious that he can’t be an effective advocate there while he is attacking rights here at home. But it is more complicated than that. All I’m saying is that Bush didn’t want shariah law and fought against it. His failure to prevent it is not part of some conspiracy against women, but just another manifestation of our total failure in Iraq.
I’m glad we agree on something! 🙂 We’ll have to agree to disagree about there being a “conspiracy against women”. I wouldn’t call it that, exactly — it’s more of a systemic disregard for and objectification of women from my pov.
Anyway, thanks for an interesting and civil conversation today, and thanks again for all the work you do here to create and maintain this kind of place.
Since it’s topical, you might be interested in checking out the outstanding post Ampersand made about women in Iraq over at Alas.
The basic quandary of the modern world is that Equal Rights requires education and a modern energy intensive economy. In resource depleted overpopulated countries the only goals are survival and reproduction.
One of the many ironies associated with the Iraq invasion is that it ignores violence generated by two peoples fighting over the same land, Palestine. In the end the only way to defeat a fundamentalist religious movement is economic development, birth control and education, secularization. None of which are goals of the Global War on Terror. Instead the Iraq invasion acerbating tensions over resources as Christians sought to take control of the second largest oil reserves in the world. It is no shock that Muslim insurgents have attacked the oil infrastructure from the very beginning of the invasion and continue to drastically limit Iraqi exports.