http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050830/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq
U.S. Envoy: Iraq Constitution May Change
BAGHDAD, Iraq - In a dramatic shift, the U.S. ambassador raised the possibility Tuesday of further changes to Iraq's draft constitution, signaling that the Bush administration has not given up its campaign to push through a charter that will be broadly accepted.
/snip/
Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters he believed "a final, final draft has not yet been, or the edits have not been, presented yet" — a strong hint to Shiites and Kurds that Washington wants another bid to accommodate the Sunnis.
"That is something that Iraqis will have to talk to each other (about) and decide for themselves," Khalilzad said, speaking alongside a major Sunni Arab community leader who denounced the current draft and accused the Shiite-dominated government's security forces of assassinating Sunnis.
The Bush administration wants a constitution acceptable to all Iraqi factions to help quell the Sunni-dominated insurgency so that U.S. and other foreign troops can begin to go home.
Shiite leaders had no comment on Khalilzad's remarks.
/snip/
"From a legal point of view, no change can be made to the draft," Shiite negotiator Hussein Athab said. "If (Khalilzad) means legal change, then this is not allowed. If he means political change, I don't know what he means."
But signs were clear that Washington did not feel constrained by legalities and was ready to pressure the Shiites after more than two years of deferring to the Shiite clergy on key steps in Iraq's transition — moves that helped drive apart the Sunnis and the Americans.
Democracy Is On the March In the Middle East!In January and February of this year, George W. Bush enjoyed a wash of favorable reviews for his decision to force an election upon the long suffering people of Iraq. A much larger number of Iraqi citizens turned up at the polls than was predicted by the usual array of Bush critics, and the stirring image of brave Iraqi women and men waving their purple pinkies at the cameras gave Shrub his one and only unalloyed PR success of 2005 so far. Virtually every respectable public voice in the country felt constrained to salute this ourpouring of the "democratic spirit" and consider it a positive "step" toward a better day for Iraq.
No sooner had the victors in that "step" toward Democracy been sworn into their solemn duty to serve as midwives to the birth of a new social order, then the Americans announced that the results of the election could not be honored. No, the victors could not take the spoils in this election, because the Sunnis had boycotted the election. The "Greater Good" of a secure and stable Iraq required that the "Lesser Virtue" of democratic rule be deferred indefinitely.
Since the Sunni citizens of Iraq neglected to elect a significant number of delegates to the Parliament charged with drafting a proposed Constitution, the Americans and their clients serving in the interim Government of Iraq rounded up a group of Sunnis to sit at the bargaining table anyway.
This is Democracy?The Main Stream Media have avoided this (and all other) gaping holes in the logic of Bush imposing democracy on Iraq by force of arms. But you really have to take a deep breath to contemplate the relationship between the idea of democracy and the practice of "nation building" that Bush is attempting in Iraq.
If the results of the election do not bring the result that we want, we simply ignore those results. If the mass of Iraqi Sunnis decline to choose their own leaders, we will make the choice for them.
Meanwhile, some people may have noticed that there is a lot of violence going on in the Sunni areas of Iraq. The terrorists are targeting people who collaborate with the Americans, and they have murdered thousands, including many high ranking targets in the police, the military and the bureaucracy.
What is Bush asking of these unelected Sunni leaders? That they represent their people and take responsibility for making the necessary and normal democratic concessions to the simple Democratic Reality that the Shiites and Kurds outnumber them three to one.
Unfortunately, these unelected leaders don't live in a civil society. In fact, the insurgents have made it perfectly clear that any Sunni who stands up to defend this Constitution will be wearing a bullseye until further notice.
It really is cruel for Bush to do this to these guys.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi patriots who played the game by Bush's rules now have what they wanted all along -- a Federal System that lets the oil money stay in the area from where it's lifted out of the sand. You can imagine the frustration of the Kurds and Shiites as the Bush Administration is not satisfied with the current result of actual votes cast by actual Iraqis. I love the restrained tone of the commentary from Shiite negotiator Hussein Athab:
"If
means legal change, then this is not allowed. If he means political change, I don't know what he means."
As of today's dispatch from Iraq, the "negotiation" is between the unelected American government and the unelected Sunni leaders who may yet step forward to "agree" to some version of this Constitution. The politically victorious Kurds and Shiites wait in the wings for the result of this new freelance diplomacy.
As this farce goes into its final act, a number of observers are starting to realize that this Constitution is the real tarbaby of the misadventure in Iraq. Either some version of this Federal System will be "ratified" by a democratic vote this October or it will be rejected. In either case, the rebellious Sunni areas will remain a chaotic war zone.
Every step of the this "democractic" process of writing, ratifying and putting into operation a Constitution has been dictated by the occupying military force in Iraq. The first step is not quite finished yet, but eventually American "diplomacy" will finish the job of writing a Constitution and present its handiwork to the Iraqi polity for a vote in October.
So far "voting" has had a negligible impact on the actual decisions made.
Conceivably, the Americans will suddenly develop a sensitivity to the protocols of actual democracy and allow the will of the Iraqi people to determine the fate of this Constitution. Personally, I doubt this and expect that the means will be found to ratify this Constitution, with or without the public support of Sunni "leaders."
If this "democratic" process (legitimate or not) results in a new Constitution, the Sunni areas will have very little oil revenue. Public order will be the responsibility of a central government dominated by Shiites and Kurds -- with no reason to expect any peace between this central government and the insurgency. In this environment, the Americans will have to stay to prevent civil war.
On the other hand, if the Constitution is defeated, the terrorists will be fat and sassy at their victory over democracy. If we leave at that point, with no political process in place to lead toward a new peaceful Iraq, a civil war will ensue.
No matter how the next few months play out, America is looking at keeping our troops in Iraq to prevent the outbreak of civil war and the prospect of a Baath party resurgence.
It is hard to imagine a series of policy blunders so perfectly aligned to lead us randomly to disaster. The American Ambassador publicly upstages the Shiite and Kurdish elected leaders who have put this Constitution together. It goes beyond my tolerance for bullshit to think that the Bush Administration does not realize how much of a humiliation this is to our erstwhile Kurdish and Shiite allies -- can you imagine how angry this will make their constituents to see their lawful participation in the Americans' "process" be dismissed by Imperial fiat?
I submit that this seeming incompetence is actually cunning. I submit that the Neoconservative "intellectuals" who dreamed up this war really meant what they said when they proclaimed that the war on terror would take 40 or 50 years. They clearly realize that the USA does not have the current wherewithal or collective will to conquer Iraq, Iran, Syria and the rest of the Middle East.
The public humiliation of General Shinseki who publicly acknowledged that conquering Iraq would take hundreds of thousands of troops and years of effort was not simply a "disagreement" about our military capability. I think that Cheney and Rumsfeld are savvy enough not to imagine that they have reinvented the wheel of imperial conquest from their comfortable positions in civilian life. They understood from jump, just like any reasonably independent minded observer, that 140,000 soldiers would be able to cordon off areas for its own infrastructure, and nothing more.
I further submit that the real goal of the Bush Administration is to get us bogged down in Iraq. The Neocon strategy is a long march, getting the country stuck in a series of situations where the costs of quitting will always be higher than the incremental step of escalating to the next level. Over this generations-long campaign, the American people will slowly be turned into a conquering Empire.
So the quagmire of Iraq will require us to maintain our bases of operation there. Eventually, the interconnections between Iraq and Iran -- and Iran's threat to have a nuclear weapon -- will put us into a position of either letting Iraq become an oil rich province of a nuclear armed Iran, or going to war with Iran. This will mean a draft and at probably at some point the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
Either this is the most uncannily stupid gaggle of geese ever to play the game of global power politics, or they have another agenda that is hidden by the smoke and mirrors and bumptious incompetence of an underachieving overpriviledged little prick who likes to blow up helpless creatures.
I think it is a truly evil method rather than just random madness.
Other opinions?
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