Iraqi Constitution is Not about Iraqis

Sometime today, the committee that is drafting a constitution for Iraq is supposed to submit its work to the Iraqi parliament for approval. A great deal of discussion about it featured in yesterday’s talking head TV shows. Not one of the illustrious pundits, from the American Ambassador to Iraq (who hit every show he could) to Democratic Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, pointed out that the constitution is being drafted not for the benefit of the Iraqis but for the benefit of the Bush administration.

As part of the deception/miscalculation that got America involved in a counterinsurgency in Mesopotamia, the Bush White House told the world that one of its goals was a self-governing Iraq operating under an Iraqi drafted and Iraqi approved constitution. It is a noble idea, but by imposing a deadline for getting the job done (today), the American government proved that it didn’t care about the quality of the document or the underlying political deals it would represent. Instead, it proved that the constitution was part of the camouflage of legitimacy needed to justify the war in the first place.

Constitutions sound very nice. Fundamental law, rules about what government can and cannot do, duties and rights of the citizenry all make a great deal of sense. Stalin wrote a very liberal and well-balanced one for the Soviet Union that he ignored in its entirety. The British have a reasonable constitution that has a great virtue or failing (depending on where one stands on various issues) of not being written down. And Japan’s is a work of genius in many ways, especially as it took a militaristic dictatorship and turned it into a pacifistic parliamentary liberal state – and it was drafted by a US general who forced it on the Japanese at bayonet point.

In Iraq, the trouble has been to find a formula for talking about power that suited the independence-minded Kurds, the Shi’ites who have a majority of the votes and the Sunnis who used to run the show. The truth seems to be that these groups want different things entirely, and therefore, there is not much common ground. The drafting committee can’t seem to decide on a name for the country (which ought to be three countries, really), and it seems uncertain if the Koran and Islam’s Sharia law will be “a source” of the legal code, or “the source.” Words here matter a great deal.

Except to America. What is important for the Bush administration is that there is a constitution drafted by some Iraqis, approved in a vote by other Iraqis that allows elections of some form to create a government bearing the stamp of legitimacy and self-determination. That government can then ask the Americans to stay forever and no other government in the world can complain. As for the claims that the US will withdraw forces from Iraq next spring, Mr. Kennedy did the same thing in 1963 in Vietnam, right before the election he might have won had he lived. Naturally, one should avoid overdoing the Vietnam comparison because there are differences. For example, Iraq’s is a dry heat.



© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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