Can we look at the world’s history of civil wars and say with any confidence that it would ever be a good thing for civil war to break out? I find it baffling in the extreme that someone could consider this a better option than even the status quo under Saddam. The mind boggles.
Yes. We can.
The toppling of the Taliban by the Northern Alliance could be called a “Civil War”. It was very successful.
Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. As I stated earlier, the US openly encouraged a civil war between the Kurds and Saddam after the first gulf war. I don’t recall anybody thinking that was mind boggling at the time. It was a good idea, just not properly implemented.
Why not, Debaser? Not because they are blowing themselves up, but because a constitution should protect the rights of minorities. Ours does - a minority of 13 states can stop a constitutional amendment dead in its tracks. A minority of 34 Senators can acquit an impeached president. Why should Iraq be cut any slack in the matter of minority protection?
The Northern Alliance did not topple the Taliban. We did.
I’d been starting to think a bit better of you in this thread.
Yup. The Kurds were promised an independent Kurdistan at the end of WWI, and the Kurds in the relevant areas of what became Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria were all about equally cheesed off that they didn’t get it. So IMHO there’s simply no way that a quasi-autonomous Kurdish state in northern Iraq wouldn’t energize Kurdish nationalism in the other three countries.
And I don’t think an Israeli-style “core homeland” solution would work either, where Kurdistan would be just defined as the Kurdish part of Iraq and all the other Kurds in the world can move there. For one thing, Iraqi Kurds probably don’t want the population of their region approximately tripled by Kurdish immigration.
For another, most of the Kurdish-majority area is in Turkey and Iran. The Kurds there and in Syria, already living on the soil that they consider their ethnic homeland, would probably not be willing to exchange that territory for the right to live in a much smaller independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq.
Nope, the cry that will go up will be “self-determination for all Kurds” and “Kurdistan united”, and Turkey, Iran, and Syria will have to figure out what they’re going to do about that, and we’ll have to figure out what we’re going to do about what they do about it.
Actually, it turned out to be somewhat mind-boggling even to some of the people who were encouraging it:
The Iraqi constitution does give “minority protection”, as you call it. The governing body will be a Council of Representatives consisting of about 260 members.
One fifth of the council can request a change to the constitution. Another third of the council can stop a change from being made. Only 50 council members acting alone have the power to call an extraordinary session of the council to discuss a specific issue, or extend the legislative session.
You mention that a third of the US Senate can stop an impeachment. Well, a third of the Iraqi Council of Representatives can stop the selection of the president of the republic.
Perhaps there isn’t as many checks and balances in the constitution as you might like. Maybe you’re right. However, no matter what the constitution looks like the Sunni minority is not going to have a lot of power. Even in the US, a 20-25% minority won’t ever have that much control.
In any case, I’m not saying that groups that are in the minority should have no rights at all. I’m simply pointing out that since the Sunni’s are a minority, they should not expect to have the kind of power that they had in the past.
Of course it wouldn’t have happened without the US. I didn’t mean to imply that the Northern Alliance was acting without support. (Do I really need to point out the obvious in order not to be accused of hiding facts?)
Just like the Kurds in Northern Iraq didn’t have the ability to defeat Saddam’s regime, the Northern Alliance didn’t have the ability to defeat the Taliban. They needed US support to do so. But, the Northern Alliance certainly was fighting their countrymen, the Taliban. Just because the US was helping one side, and helping them a whole lot, doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be called a “civil war”.
Fair enough.
QED. :rolleyes: Do you, in fact, have any reply to anything else I’ve said?
By allying with the Alliance, as it were. Both the US and NA played roles in it. It also, btw, is questionable how completely the Taliban has been overthrown. This nice Mr. Karzai we’ve installed as front man is often said to have no authority outside Greater Kabul.
When the Ottoman Empire was being partitioned off, but before Ataturk emerged as a leader able to control all of Anatolia. Conventional wisdom is that the Allies drew the lines across the territory of ethnic groups, most notably the Kurdish areas but not exclusively, in order to keep them from cohering and opposing the Allies-installed leaders of the new nations. In that part of the world, it might as well have been yesterday when all that happened.
I guess I don’t get this. From what I’ve read the thing was voted on by 9.8 million Iraqis (or aprox 63 percent of registered voters), and won by 78.59 percent for ratification and 21.41 percent against. That seems a pretty wide margin. Don’t we WANT democracy there…and doesn’t that kind of mean ‘majority rule’? Turn it around…how happy would you guys be if instead of voting to ratify what is obviously the popular choice, the Sunni’s had forced through their way (you know, like they did for decades when they held the whip hand)…how democratic would THAT have been. Would you guys be happier?
Yes, there is a minority that don’t agree. Guess what? There is ALWAYS a minority that don’t agree in any election/ratification process (like, when Bush was elected/re-elected for instance, or when our own constitution was ratified). Yeah, that minority makes up a large percentage of the current insurgency. I see no indication though that if the Sunni’s had completely gotten their way that the insurgency would just stop though. Even assuming it would, this seems like extortion to me, and just another way to hold the Sunni whip over the rest of the country…‘Do it our way or the insurgency rolls on killing your innocent men, women and children!’. How fair would THAT be?
At any rate, its passed now…it will be interesting to see what happens in the general election.
-XT
Certainly, but the trouble is, as noted previously, that the vote is so split along ethnic, religious, and regional lines.
Sure, but we don’t want a kind of “Jim Crow” majority rule where an ethnic/religious majority or coalition is quasi-legally disenfranchising a large minority group. Moreover, we don’t want the minority group in question to be convinced that this is what is going to happen, especially if they have AK-47s and car bombs.
Well, I brought up that possibility earlier, and as I noted, it’s kind of a tough call. For one thing, a legal democratic minority electoral veto of a constitution isn’t at all the same thing as a tyrannical oppressive minority dictatorship, so the fact that the minority in both cases are Iraqi Sunnis doesn’t bother me.
For another, I’m not yet entirely convinced that going ahead with the current constitution will turn out to be better for Iraq in the long run than delaying the process to fix some of the most divisive constitutional issues and muster more Sunni support. I hope it will, because it’s where we’re headed now and we can’t turn back, but that doesn’t mean that it’s guaranteed to be the right choice.
True…of course, there is always some split along some lines in this kind of thing. I suppose its perhaps better that the majority are seemingly happy with the thing and its only a minority that are pissed off…than vice versa.
Taking the first part of this, just remember who it was that held the whip hand against the majority of the rest of the population…besides, as you acknowledge later the ‘Jim Crow’ thing really doesn’t work because the minority haven’t been disenfranchized to the extent that blacks were in the US during those times (i.e. the minority were given the ability to vote, and there was even provision in the vote that if 3 provinces voted 2/3rd against it would fail…so there were at least attempts to allow the minority the chance to shoot this thing down).
Think in terms of South Africa I suppose, about a small minority holding it over the majority. How comfortable would you be if the white South African’s were able to short circuit the majority (I’m talking after the relaxation of aparthide of course) by putting in special provisions to ensure they maintained power (or whatever)…over the objections of the majority? I agree its a fine line…
As to the second, the Sunni insurgents don’t seem to be very shy about using those weapons in any case so I don’t know why the rest of Iraq should take that into consideration. Now, if the Sunni insurgents had basically stopped fighting this year, waiting on the process and then resumed when the rest or Iraq decided to proceed despite Sunni objections, then you might have a point here. Of course, its not just the Sunni’s (there are foreign fighters/AQ involved too)…but if the Sunni’s bowed out I’d say the level of violence would drop noticably. It hasn’t (quite the opposite, despite my own inner predictions that it would this year).
I’m unsure as well…and I also hope it will.
-XT
Democracy means a little more than that, or it’s simply tyranny by the largest mob. Without respect for minority rights, you don’t have a working democracy.
As for what we want there, that would seem to be not only a true democracy but a secular one, friendly to the West, selling that luscious oil at bottom prices. If self-rule, what “the majority of Iraqis want”, means an Iran-style (and Iran-allied) Shiite theocracy, then no, I don’t think that’s what you want.
What’s really at issue though is whether this constitution really is better for the country or whether they would have been better off sorting out objections before proposing it. I can’t see it as a good thing, because every news report I’ve read on it seems to indicate that it gives significant ability to separate the country into autonomous regions, with an oil-rich Kurdish north, an oil-rich Shia south, and a small worthless Sunni middle. If I were a Sunni I’d be damn scared of that possibility. Is it better for Iraq to be partitioned and create, to quote Moe, three of them “loser countries”, or is it better to keep it together, and hopefully educate and influence the people over time to identify with their national identity first and their religious sect or ethnicity second? I think the latter, but with the constitution as voted that may not have a chance to happen.
Further, look at the degree to which it was opposed in the provinces that voted No. Huge rejection there. It’s not like we’re talking about a small fringe, we’re talking about a very significant proportion of the population that really, really don’t want this constitution ratified. The future does not look positive in Mesopotamia.
And how were those rights not respected? Because they didn’t get their way? Again, I don’t get it. There were provisions in the vote that took into account the minority and gave them a real chance to overturn the majority decision (in fact, they got 2 provinces to vote 2/3rds against and only needed one more to shoot the thing down). To me it sounds very much like you are saying that unless the minority gets their way against the majority then you can’t have a working democracy, because to my mind the Sunni’s minority rights WERE taken into account.
We aren’t ever going to get any of those things from any nation in the ME (excepting Israel)…so, why have the pipe dream? The best we can hope for is a stable Iraq that is neutral (or at least not openly hostile) to the West and the US. If we get THAT then we’ll really have something…something different than most of the rest of the nations there anyway.
As to your last sentence, do you see an Iran style theocracy emerging from whats happening in Iraq with the ratification of this constitution? Because it doesn’t look that way to me, though gods know what they will actually end up with…not that though I wouldn’t think.
-XT
I wonder if you’re perhaps avoiding thinking about that deeply enough. A theocracy seem a very real possibility to me, especially if the Kurds split off. Whatever state does emerge, it will certainly not be as secular as Hussein’s regime.
63 percent of registered voters voted on the thing (no Sunni protest this time so it was up a bit from the last election). 78.59 percent of registered voters were for ratification and 21.41 percent against. 21.41 percent is not a significant proportion, even if it was concentrated in a few provinces…and its not exactly unexpected. Lets see…how about this? If there was a national referendum tomorrow voted on by every state to decide whether or not abortion should be out and out illegal, and a few ‘red’ states voted yes, but most states were either ‘blue’ or purple, and the final result was 78.59 against it being illegal and 21.41 were for…would you feel the same way? Would you hem and haw about a ‘very significant proportion of the population’ being against, and consider that a huge rejection? Or would you say it was a clear victory for democracy and push ahead with dumping making abortion illegal because the majority had spoken?
Perhaps this is a bad analogy but I couldn’t think of a better one off the top of my head to make this point.
-XT
It could be. Iranian theocracy emerged because of a clerics revolution against the Shaw’s government. Eventually some token democratic practices were bolted on. Iraq is starting off with the democratic framework to begin with…and without the revolution or the heavy clerical imprint on the government (not, heavy…thats not to say none) that the Iranians started with. I don’t see the parallels, though it could be because I haven’t dug deeply enough to see them. What parallels do you see between how Iran got its start on the road to theocracy and the emerging Iraqi government (such as it is)?
-XT
No, I think Elvis is talking about the provisions in the Iraqi constitution that disadvantage the Sunnis, such as the provisions for federalism (where the mostly-Kurdish north and the mostly-Shi’a south could have more or less autonomous control over their oil resources without sharing with the oil-less, mostly-Sunni center). And in particular the provisions for “de-Baathification”, which according to many Sunnis will punish Sunnis in general for the actions of the previous Baathist government.
So the minority-rights issue is not that the Sunnis didn’t get to reject the constitution (they had a fair shot at it, as far as we can tell, and lost fair and square), but that the constitution may be intrinsically skewed against them.
And yes, I sure as hell can see an Iranian-style and Iran-allied Shi’ite theocracy taking over in Iraq, at least in the Shi’ite-controlled regions.
In fact, IMO, the worst-case scenario for Iraq (short of a broader regional war, that is) would consist of “Proto-Kurdistan” in the north sparking Kurdish nationalist revolt and state repression in the neighboring Kurdish areas of Turkey, Iran, and Syria; a Sunni-controlled “Bloody Center” in open insurrection, fomented by foreign Wahhabi jihadists such as al-Qaeda; and “West Iran” running a repressive mullah government in the Shi’ite south.
Actually, the best-case scenario that I can realistically imagine for Iraq looks pretty much the same, except with a lot less bloodshed, a lot more commitment to tolerance, democracy and human rights, and a good deal of cross-regional resource sharing along with a united economy and military. But I’m not sure I see any practically possible alternative to some kind of three-state federation.
Really? Who do you think is running those Shi’a political parties? What about the role of notorious radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr?
Here’s a recent discussion on the subject of Iranian influence on Iraq: