[Vision2020] 09-02-05 NY Times OP/ED: Baghdad and Philadelphia

[Art Deco]

NY Times:

Editorial
Baghdad and Philadelphia
Published: September 2, 2005
Iraq has provoked some pretty odd utterances from the Bush administration over the years. High among them are President Bush's tortured comparisons between the vigorous debates and political compromises that produced America's Constitution in 1787 and the stillborn constitutional discussions between representatives of Iraq's alienated Sunni Arab minority and the dominant majority coalition of Shiites and Kurds.

Lately, the president has excused the Iraqi leaders' inability to draft a truly democratic constitution by telling an audience in Idaho that Americans know that "the document our founders produced in Philadelphia was not the final word." Leave aside the fact that Mr. Bush and other like-minded Republicans have been hectoring Americans for years to view that text as the unevolved, binding and authoritative final word on all matters before the Supreme Court. The president also neglects some crucial differences between the two countries during their constitutional deliberations. 

America in 1787 had serious governance issues. That's why the Constitutional Convention was called. But unlike Iraq, it was not torn by a raging insurgency. Its basic security did not depend on a huge foreign military force that set arbitrary deadlines for its constitutional debates. And its 13 states had already had some 11 years of experience of trying to work together as a single nation, including the successful conduct of a war for independence. 

Most important, through those vigorous debates the delegates to America's Constitutional Convention rose to meet their historic responsibility for forming "a more perfect union." They produced a blueprint for a workable government, further improved by a continuing series of constitutional amendments, which began with the precious protections of liberty incorporated into the Bill of Rights. 

Nothing like that has happened in Iraq. When constitutional talks began, Washington desperately hoped that they would help meld Iraq's centrifugal components into a self-governing nation. Instead, the process has driven Iraqis even further apart.

Some people, looking at the historical grievances and antipathies of Iraq's Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish communities, have argued that the loose federation of semi-autonomous regions envisioned in the draft constitution makes more sense than trying to force these groups together under one roof. That might be true in some alternative reality where borders could be clearly drawn, resources could be fairly apportioned and neighbors could be expected to look on benignly while Iraq broke up into its component communities. 

But following that course in Iraq is a prescription for civil war and for regional war, with America's military forces inextricably caught up in both. Anything resembling an independent Kurdistan is likely to mean war with Turkey. A breakaway Shiite southeast would draw in a meddling Iran. A stranded Sunni Arab west would naturally look to Syria and radical Sunnis in other Arab lands. And as is almost always the case when nations fragment, the new borders are likely to be contested. 

While some Iraqi provinces are clearly dominated by a single religious or ethnic group, many are not. Kirkuk, the northern oil-producing center, is fiercely disputed between Kurds and mostly Sunni Arabs. Baghdad, the ancient capital, has a Shiite majority, but it is also the home of many Sunnis and mixed-marriage families. 

We hope, with Mr. Bush, that in the six weeks remaining until the constitutional referendum, Iraqis suddenly discover the sense of nationhood that has eluded them during the long months of constitutional deliberations. We hope that the majority Shiites and Kurds come to recognize that drawing Sunni Arabs back from the insurgency and into the constitutional process is their responsibility, not Washington's. We hope that the legal rights of Iraqi women are reinforced rather than eroded. 

But unlike Mr. Bush, we are ready to acknowledge that it is dangerously late in the game and that the best chances for getting these things right have been squandered. There is no point pretending that this is Philadelphia in 1787. It is Baghdad in 2005.
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