Vae Victus

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Location: Chicago, IL

I am a consultant from chicago where I live with my wife, our dog, and two cats

Sunday, September 18, 2005

The Iraqi Constitution Passes Another Hurdle

As Ed reports on http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/005464.php#comments the Iraqi parliament has approved their proposed constitution. Despite not getting full agreement from the Sunni representatives who were bent on obstructing the passage, the Constitution goes onto a nationwide vote on October 15th. There seem to have been compromise by different groups and not every group got what they wanted (sounds like a good beginning to a Federal arrangement to me!).

No mention of this on CNN or the NYTimes as far as I can tell, although both of those sites note yesterdays "insurgent" attacks. We'll see if this story gets any play on Monday. My guess is that we'll see them ignore it as much as possible and when they don't, they'll play up the lack of Sunni support in parliament as the biggest issue of the day.

Yahoo's story is here: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050918/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_constitution

Most interesting quote to me, "Sunnis are deeply opposed to portions of the draft that allow for federalism and to its reference to Iraq as a Muslim but not an Arab country.
The Sunnis say federalism is only a prelude to the breakup of a country that historically has been held together by a strong central government."

Of course, the AP writer, Sameer N. Yacoubi doesn't bother to tell us that the Kurds would take issue with being called an "Arab" country. Second of all, the strong central government that has historically held the country together has been one run by the minority, tyrannical Sunni coalition. Finally, the Sunnis should be happy to have a federalism. They don't have the oil, they don't have anything other than the memories of having once been the dominant minority and having squandered it and the nation's wealth and advantages by supporting a murderous thug.

Either way, the Sunnis have to muster over 2/3 opposition in 3 provinces. It is likely that they can only get that support in 2 of those 3 (see Ed's commentary for a more complete discussion).

--Alan...

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