NYP: IRAQ'S DELAY: POLITICS TRIUMPH - Delayers defied top cleric Sustani, by Amir Taheri

New York Post ^ | August 17, 2005 | AMIR TAHERI

[OESY]

Is the decision by the Iraqi National Assembly... to postpone for a week its scheduled debate on a new draft constitution "a major setback" for the newly liberated nation, or just a bump on the road to democratization?

No doubt, many nostalgics of Saddam Hussein had been praying that the Aug. 15 deadline would not be met. These are people who want Iraq to fail so that they could prove that George W. Bush and Tony Blair were wrong....

The postponement was a setback if only because this was the first time that the new leadership couldn't meet a political deadline it has fixed for itself. One cannot begrudge the opponents of the liberation their unique moment of jubilation.

But if this was "a major setback," as some dons of dilatory deeds have claimed, why did Iraqi lawmakers break into spontaneous applause after they had voted to postpone the constitutional debate? Did they know something... serial filibusterers on Capitol Hill didn't?

The answer is that while the postponement was a tactical setback for the Iraqi lawmakers, it represented a strategic advance for the practice of democracy in the newly liberated country. The Iraqis working on the draft resisted intense pressure from all quarters, including Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani (the Shiite top cleric) and Zalmay Khalilzad (the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad) to brush disagreements under the carpet and come up with "something."

They were told that they should set aside the most contentious issues and offer the Assembly the apple-pie and motherhood parts of their exercise. But the drafters understood that the object of democracy is not to make everyone happy on every issue every time. Indeed, the opposite is often the case — if only because democratic decisions, based on compromise as they're bound to be, never fully satisfy anyone....

[goldstategop]

Amir Taheri has written a superb article about the polyphonous voices in Iraq's society and how people are having to listen for each other for the first time. In writing a constitution, its important not to sacrifice coalition-building and forming a consensus for speed. There is no single formula in Iraq that will make every one happy. The people of Iraq will in the end support a constitution that is perceived to be fairly arrived at instead of being imposed from above. For a country emerging from a brutal dictatorship, its an exciting time. People are being heard and the delay in adopting a new constitution should be seen as Taheri rightly points out, not a tactical setback but rather as a strategic advance for the future of the country's embryonic civil society.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[MNJohnnie]

Anyone know how long it took our founders?