Posted on 12/11/2005 2:51:21 PM PST by neverdem
WASHINGTON and Baghdad will be tempted, with the adoption of a new Constitution and the election on Thursday for a four-year government, to declare victory in Iraq. In one sense, they are right to do so. The emerging Iraqi polity undoubtedly represents a radical break not only with the country's past but also with the whole Arab state system established by Britain and France after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
But in the larger sense, such optimism is misguided, for none of the problems associated with Iraq's monumental change have been sorted out. Worse, profound tensions and contradictions have been enshrined in the Constitution of the new Iraq, and they threaten the very existence of the state.
How did we get here? Much has been said about American failures in Iraq. And rightly so. But, as I've seen as a participant in political discussions both before and after the war, we Iraqis have also failed to lay the ground for a new order. For the new political elite cast into power by the elections last January has been unable even to begin to create a stable and strong Iraqi state to replace the one overthrown in April 2003. The increasing daily casualty rate for Iraqis, from 26 in early 2004 to an average of 64 in this fall, is only the most glaring sign that something has gone terribly wrong, and not for lack of any American effort to turn the situation around.
Unfortunately, we cannot expect the situation to change following Thursday's election. There is little chance that the winner will command the authority inside Parliament to reverse the decline, for a simple reason: the Constitution.
All signs suggest that this Constitution, if it is not radically amended, will further weaken the already failing central Iraqi state. In...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Right on. If the US can survive the outrage of its own home-grown terrorism in the form of the MSM, Democrat party, Marxist intellectuals and other members of the antimoral left, Iraq can survive similar idiocy.
I've seen a copy of this editorial, and Pres. Bush read excerpts from it at the 2004 Republican convention. It really exists, though I can't find a link to the text right now.
While you weren't addressing your question to me, I got intrigued enough to find the answers. The article is here.
As you'd expect, there are various interpretations of what it says. For some background on the controversy when Pres. Bush quoted from this article, click here and here. (Use caution -- that last link takes you to a Mo Do column.)
Check out who writes for Benador Associates. As I wrote earlier, I think the Times may have given the dispiriting title to the article. My take on the article is that it's a plea to amend the Iraqi Constitution. http://www.benadorassociates.com/members.php
Well, you're right that there's a ton of good people on their list. I don't know all of them, but most of those I know are either conservatives (like Herb London) or at least honest liberals (A. M. Rosenthal).
Maybe I was put in a bad mood by the opening of this piece. But the problem is, many newspaper readers tend to go mainly by the headline and the opening paragraphs. So, if he put that in to placate the Times's editors and slip something through, I'm not sure how well it will work.
Be prepared to see these statements miraculously appear as DNC talking points!
Thanks for the links, but I was hoping for something documenting a post 1945 occupation and active, hostile, armed Nazi resistance to the American occupation, and a NY Times' masthead editorial telling Truman to bug out because of the Nazi or nationalist resistance.
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