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Posted on 10/15/2003 8:22:54 AM PDT by WarrenGamaliel
A NEW CONSTITUTION -- COMING UP! September 30, 2003
by Joe Sobran
The U.S. occupation of Iraq is getting seriously weird. The U.S. Government has served notice that the occupation won't end until the Iraqis come up with a constitution, and Secretary of State Colin Powell thinks six months is a reasonable deadline. The Iraqis appointed to do the job say they'll need at least a year.
A year? The U.S. Constitution was banged out in a couple of months in the summer of 1787. Of course conditions were somewhat different. The delegates to our Philadelphia convention were sent by the 13 states, not chosen by a foreign power, and they had plenty of experience to guide their steps.
It's a little odd for an invading force to impose "self-government" on a conquered people. Self-government usually occurs when there are no foreigners specifying how it's to be done.
The American specifications for Iraqi self-government include, according to the WASHINGTON POST, the following principles: "federalism, democracy, nonviolence, a respect for diversity, and a role for women." Except for federalism, none of these principles is embodied in the U.S. Constitution, which is pretty much defunct anyway. The U.S. Government today is no more guided by the U.S. Constitution than the Unitarian Church is guided by the Book of Revelation, but the Iraqis will be expected to adhere to a constitution that hasn't been written yet.
And why must a constitution be written? The two chief allies of the United States, Great Britain and Israel, don't have written constitutions. The British Constitution can be changed by a simple majority vote in Parliament; the U.S. Constitution is supposed to be amended by a cumbersome ratification process, but can actually be changed by five votes in the U.S. Supreme Court.
You might say of our Constitution what Gandhi said of Western civilization: "I think it would be a wonderful idea." Regardless, an Iraqi constitution modeled closely on our own wouldn't meet the standards laid down for ending the occupation.
Democracy, nonviolence, diversity, women -- this is the language of contemporary liberals, not the Founding Fathers, let alone Arab culture. And the Iraqis also have to cope with their own religious, ethnic, and tribal divisions. Good luck.
So much for the alleged conservatism of the Bush administration. The attempt to dictate the terms of a constitution for a foreign country with an alien culture smacks more of microwave cooking than of political wisdom. The Bush crowd knows little of American history and tradition, and even less of those of the Middle East.
Yet the administration is in effect choosing a new set of founding fathers for Iraq and ordering them to compose a constitution, pronto, with a gun to their heads. Is it any wonder that the world sees Americans as both naive and arrogant? And can this be the same George W. Bush who, during the 2000 presidential campaign, voiced a prudent conservative skepticism about nation-building abroad?
Overpowering Iraq was the easy part. Destruction is simple in principle and America is incomparable at achieving it. But it's obvious that raw force has nothing to do with the ability to create and nurture viable institutions. The administration wasn't content with smashing Saddam Hussein's regime; it felt it must stick around and take responsibility for the aftermath for as long as it took. Now it expects to develop a new Iraqi political culture in six months.
The sheer economic cost of the occupation has already turned out to be staggering, far beyond the administration's hopeful estimates. Just keeping the water and electricity flowing is a huge job. But transplanting Western-style governance, which is clumsy enough even at home, is more like irrigating the Sahara or heating Antarctica. If you're ambitious enough to try it, you'd better not be in a big hurry.
Two years ago a war to end terrorism sounded futile enough. But to this Bush has now added what nobody would have predicted of him: goals that are downright utopian. He makes Woodrow Wilson at Versailles seem like a nuts-and-bolts man. He also inspires nostalgia for his father, who approached the 1991 Iraq war with sharply limited purposes -- purposes so narrow that they only whetted the appetite of neoconservatives for a bigger and better war in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, those neoconservatives have been leading the younger Bush by the nose. We're now learning what "regime change" really meant. And learning the hard way.
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Um. Japan? Germany? Perhaps it's in his choice of words.
The people were conquered already (by Saddam) and did this guy look into Japan or Germany on how they became what they are today?
From Story's Commentary: "On the 12th of July, 1776, the committee, appointed to prepare articles of confederation, presented a draft,3 which was in the hand-writing of Mr. Dickenson, one of the committee, and a delegate from Pennsylvania The draft, so reported, was debated from the 22d to the 31st of July, and on several days between the 5th and 20th of August, 1776. ....The subject seems not again to have been touched until the 8th of April, 1777, and the articles were debated at several times between that time and the 15th of November of the same year. On this last day the articles were reported with sundry amendments, and finally adopted by congress. "
This article was posted yesterday BTW.
Sobran is forgetting the many years of experience and troubles - both during colonial rule and conferedation - that provided the experience necessary to "bang out" such a constitution.
Apparently it is required that anyone who uses the term "neoconservative" must misrepresent US history.
Most of them do it from ignorance, but Sobran probably knew better.
Chill, Joe. Given the country's history, these four items mean something quite different in context.
Democracy: the citizens will get to vote in free elections.
Nonviolence: the armed forces will be severely restricted, either voluntarily or by the conquerors.
Diversity: much like our very own 1st Amendment, the Iraqi constitution is going to have to allow for the coexistence of the 3 major factions of Islam present.
Women: If Joe thinks the US did a good job with treating women with dignity and humanity in the first century of our existence, he's an even bigger idiot than he lets on. The Arab culture is worse. Codifying and legitimizing women's rights as equal citizens in Iraq is not only sensible, it's probably imperative.
Sobran is aping the major media outlets by taking facts and twisting them into fictions. "Diversity" on a US college campus has very real and bad connotations for the conservative thinker. "Diversity" in Iraq means something altogether different. But I guess he likes being an ass.
Write the Constitution for them.
It was, however, a second pass, replacing the Articles of Confederation.
The Iraqis are not conquered.
Their army was broken up, and their "government" was dispersed, however, American writ does not run the length and breadth of Iraq, as it did in thye case of Germany and Japan in 1945.
We destroyed the Hussein regime. That leaves a people who have little experience in self-government, who are surrounded by truly awful polities desperate to see them -- and us -- fail, and who badly need all the help we can give them. As for the "diversity" and "women" bits, they might be best interpreted in the Iraqi context, as another commenter has said.
It's not within our power to impose an American-style federal republic there, but we can nudge the proto-government in that direction, and we should certainly do what we can.
Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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