Sunday, October 16, 2005
What a difference a day makes!
Yesterday's Al-Jazeera Constitution headlined with "Iraq holding its breath". The Iraqis were voting on a new constitution, and the bed-wetters at the AJC were hoping for massive bombings, thousands dead, voting disrupted, black eye for Chimpy Bushitler MacHalliburton, etc., etc. This after Thursday's headline "Constitution could destroy Iraq".
Today, it's obvious the voting was pretty much peaceful - less violence than on 30 January, when the Iraqis had national elections, the Sunnis participated, and *they* voted for the constitution. In other words massive success.
The AJC's response? Well, of course, today's headline is about the untimely death of a professional athlete, and Home Depot's lack of civic involvement. The Home Depot story was repeated in the business section, so Bernie Marcus must have pissed off somebody in the Cox family. The Iraqi Constitution? Page 3. With a title ("Little Violence as Iraqis Vote") that suggests the 'Yes' vote doesn't mean all that much.
Let's see. Three years ago Saddam won with 99.9% of the vote. Now he's in jail. Thirty months after the US invaded, the Iraqis are voting on their own Constitution. During the vote, most of the security was provided by an increasingly confident and competent Iraqi army and police force. Just for comparison, the US Constitution was about 13 years in the making.
I think that when the history of this is written, we're going to see that GWB changed the course of world history, despite the NYT, ANSWER, MoveOn.org, Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan, and all he rest of the watermelon left. God bless him.
UPDATE: "Iraq Charter Seems Assured of Approval".
Money Quote: "Sunni Arabs, who controlled the country under Saddam, widely opposed the charter, fearing it will break the country into three sections: powerful Kurdish and Shiite mini-states in the oil-rich north and south, and a weak and impoverished Sunni zone in central and western Iraq."
You can rest assured that if the Sunnis happened to be sitting on the oil reserves, they'd tell the rest of Iraq to go to hell.
This whole process is so perfect. The Sunnis - normally the overlords in every Arab country - have to accept that they'll have to play well with others, because they've got nothing. The Kurds and Shi'ites are willing to go in with the Sunnis to preserve the borders of Iraq, but are reserving the right to go their own way if the Sunnis keep up the Zarqawi bit. There's a really delicate dance going on here, and the end - I think - will be a situation not unlike the US: three fairly-independent regions with a federal apparatus over them all. The rest of the Muslim world may eventually get the message that states can be constructed that don't require maximum leaders.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The Sunni nightmare: Iraqi security forces that don't depend on Sunni leadership.
Yesterday's Al-Jazeera Constitution headlined with "Iraq holding its breath". The Iraqis were voting on a new constitution, and the bed-wetters at the AJC were hoping for massive bombings, thousands dead, voting disrupted, black eye for Chimpy Bushitler MacHalliburton, etc., etc. This after Thursday's headline "Constitution could destroy Iraq".
Today, it's obvious the voting was pretty much peaceful - less violence than on 30 January, when the Iraqis had national elections, the Sunnis participated, and *they* voted for the constitution. In other words massive success.
The AJC's response? Well, of course, today's headline is about the untimely death of a professional athlete, and Home Depot's lack of civic involvement. The Home Depot story was repeated in the business section, so Bernie Marcus must have pissed off somebody in the Cox family. The Iraqi Constitution? Page 3. With a title ("Little Violence as Iraqis Vote") that suggests the 'Yes' vote doesn't mean all that much.
Let's see. Three years ago Saddam won with 99.9% of the vote. Now he's in jail. Thirty months after the US invaded, the Iraqis are voting on their own Constitution. During the vote, most of the security was provided by an increasingly confident and competent Iraqi army and police force. Just for comparison, the US Constitution was about 13 years in the making.
I think that when the history of this is written, we're going to see that GWB changed the course of world history, despite the NYT, ANSWER, MoveOn.org, Code Pink, Cindy Sheehan, and all he rest of the watermelon left. God bless him.
UPDATE: "Iraq Charter Seems Assured of Approval".
Money Quote: "Sunni Arabs, who controlled the country under Saddam, widely opposed the charter, fearing it will break the country into three sections: powerful Kurdish and Shiite mini-states in the oil-rich north and south, and a weak and impoverished Sunni zone in central and western Iraq."
You can rest assured that if the Sunnis happened to be sitting on the oil reserves, they'd tell the rest of Iraq to go to hell.
This whole process is so perfect. The Sunnis - normally the overlords in every Arab country - have to accept that they'll have to play well with others, because they've got nothing. The Kurds and Shi'ites are willing to go in with the Sunnis to preserve the borders of Iraq, but are reserving the right to go their own way if the Sunnis keep up the Zarqawi bit. There's a really delicate dance going on here, and the end - I think - will be a situation not unlike the US: three fairly-independent regions with a federal apparatus over them all. The rest of the Muslim world may eventually get the message that states can be constructed that don't require maximum leaders.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The Sunni nightmare: Iraqi security forces that don't depend on Sunni leadership.
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