I am speaking of Iraq’s constitution, which apparently is more or less worthless as a legal document binding on Iraq’s government. At least that’s how President Bush and Prime Minister Maliki must feel about it, because they failed to comply with the provisions of that constitution and a separate law which both require the Iraqi Parliament’s approval to any UN Security Council Resolution authorizing US troops to remain in Iraq past the end of this year (via Alternet):
On Tuesday, the Bush administration and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pushed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council extending the mandate that provides legal cover for foreign troops to operate in Iraq for another year.
The move violated both the Iraqi constitution and a law passed earlier this year by the Iraqi parliament — the only body directly elected by all those purple-finger-waving Iraqis in 2005 — and it defied the will of around 80 percent of the Iraqi population.
Earlier in the week, a group representing a majority of lawmakers in Iraq’s parliament — a group made up of Sunni, Shiite and secular leaders — sent a letter to the Security Council, a rough translation of which reads: “We reject in the strongest possible terms the unconditional renewal of the mandate and ask for clear mechanisms to obligate all foreign troops to completely withdrawal from Iraq according to an announced timetable.” […]
James Paul, director of the Global Policy Forum, which follows the United Nations’ intrigues, said that while “there’s concern in many delegations at the United Nations about what is going on,” Security Council delegates “are under instructions from their governments to lay low and pass the U.S. resolution.” According to Paul, the move “shows the despotic power of the U.S. government to force everyone to knuckle under, no matter how much the law is violated.”
It was an egregious assault on Iraq’s nascent democracy, as well as its supposed “sovereignty,” and can only encourage more bloodshed. Yet the commercial media has so far ignored the story entirely, reporting only that “Iraq” had requested that the mandate be renewed. […]
. . . This move speaks to the degree to which occupation and democracy are mutually exclusive, and to how Bush and Maliki must run roughshod over the Iraqi legislature (not to mention the U.S. Congress), sacrificing opportunities for political reconciliation along the way, in order to maintain an almost universally despised American military presence in the country. […]
The U.N. mandate provides vital political cover for the occupation. The Bush administration has ignored or violated much of the international law governing the conduct of an occupying power. As Orwellian as it is, the United States, having bombed the hell out of Iraq, invaded it with a huge mechanized army and installed a government that exists wholly within the confines of its sheltered “international zone” — the “Green Zone” — and now maintains that its troops are in the country by the invitation of that government. The United Nations’ mandate is a key part of maintaining that fiction. […]
A majority of Iraq’s legislators viewed the renewal as unconstitutional. While article 80, section 6, of the young constitution gives the cabinet the right to “negotiate” and “sign” international agreements and treaties, article 61, section 4, reads: “A law shall regulate the ratification of international treaties and agreements by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Council of Representatives.” Like the U.S. system, the executive branch can only negotiate international treaties; the legislature has to ratify them. […]
[T]he Iraqi MPs took it upon themselves to notify the Security Council delegates that any request to renew the mandate that is “issued by the Iraqi cabinet without the Iraqi parliament’s approval is unconstitutional.” It added: “The Iraqi parliament, as the elected representatives of the Iraqi people, has the exclusive right to approve and ratify international treaties and agreements including those signed with the United Nations Security Council.”
At the end of November, Foreign Affairs Minister Zebari was again called to testify before the Iraqi parliament. He promised, unequivocally, that any request to extend the mandate “will not be presented to the U.N. Security Council prior to its submission to the Iraqi parliament for deliberation.”
But that wasn’t to be. In the letter sent this week, Iraqi lawmakers’ demand was unambiguous: “We ask the Security Council not to accept any letter requesting renewal that is not ratified by the parliament. Such a letter would be deemed illegal and unconstitutional according to the laws of Iraq,” it read.
No debate was held in the Iraqi legislature, and on Tuesday the Security Council voted unanimously to renew the mandate.
So much for the Bush “freedom agenda” eh? Of course, considering what Bush thinks about the authority of the US Congress, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that he would have a similar disdain and contempt for the authority of Iraq’s legislative body. And his current puppet leader in Iraq must feel the same way. It’s much easier to be a dictator than the leader of a free and democratic society, after all.
