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Sunday, October 16, 2005

If You Want Safety and Security In Iraq…

…just hold nationwide elections every day. Iraq’s historic constitutional referendum looks very likely to pass, and under peaceful conditions no less. Many Sunnis, who were for a time united in boycotting the vote itself, actually turned up to vote after an amendment was passed allowing alterations to the document down the line.

As I watch and read about all of this, I cannot help but recall middle school social studies. We learned all about those founding fathers and the circumstances under which they jammed the United States Constitution, a document that has turned out to be mankind’s last and best hope for peace and prosperity, through the land.

Michael Herman’s dim view of yesterday’s unprecedented referendum is not atypical of the defeatist spin, but as I read it I am not sure whether he is recounting the history of the United States Constitution or Iraq’s:

On the one hand, Iraq has long been an artificial country with the ethnic groups held together only by repressive dictatorships. The federal system, however, all but guarantees a fractured country with a weak central government and the possibility of continued strife and insurgency over who can reap the profits from the oil fields, which are predominantly in the Shiite-dominated region. Fortunately, the Assembly just approved a provision that would allow the new legislature to adopt substantial changes to the constitution once it is passed.

On the one hand, Iraq was under the command of a selfish and nearly disinterested third-party minority, and it took armed revolution to give the people true sovereignty. The federal system, newly enshrined in a constitution, all but guarantees a party-based political structure with a weak central government and the possibility of conflict over who controls the nation’s natural resources. Fortunately, last-minute promises that the constitution can later be altered to include certain panoplies of rights have encouraged an obstinate minority to go along for the ride.

I suppose the two aren’t all that different in the end. And how dulce et decorum that it was the old democracy which birthed the new. The old constitution evincing a new. And how amazing that so little of the top-level political process has been controlled by America. Soldiers aren’t allowed in the polling places; they stand guard outside the voting areas. Just doing their job, which is to make sure Iraqis can do theirs. Yet with that autonomy, what do Iraqis do? They fashion something distinctly democratic, distinctly American in inspiration. I hope there are film crews down there, because it is a revolution-in-progress, and everyone can be proud.

Posted on October 16, 2005 07:49 AM. Permalink