Freedom's Fidelity

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Progress

This is certainly good news:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi leaders reached a breakthrough deal on last minute changes in the constitution Tuesday, and at least one Sunni Arab party said it would reverse its rejection of the document and urge its supporters to approve it in next weekend's referendum.

The deal boosts the chances for a constitution that Shiite and Kurdish leaders support and the United States has been eager to see approved in Saturday's vote to avert months more of political turmoil, delaying plans to start a withdrawal of U.S. forces.

U.S. officials have pushed the three days of negotiations between Shiite and Kurdish leaders in the government and Sunni Arab officials, that concluded with marathon talks at the house of President Jalal Talabani late Tuesday.

The sides agreed to a measure stating that if the draft constitution is passed, the next parliament will be able to consider amendments to it that would then be put to a new referendum next year, Shiite and Sunni officials said.

A top Sunni negotiator, Ayad al-Samarraie of the Iraqi Islamic Party, said that if the current parliament approves the measure, "we will stop the campaign rejecting the constitution and we will call on Sunni Arabs to vote yes."

It seems we've been hearing for a couple years now about that civil war that's right around the corner... er the next corner. Instead civil society is a more probable outcome. There will certainly be some political uncertainties as a new democratic Iraq emerges, but those uncertainties are precisely why the liberation was justified. Under Hussein Iraqis faced only the certainty of torture chambers and mass graves, repeated for generations unending.

Now they are free to debate all aspects of their lives. Like any other functional society Iraq is home to many competing and conflicting views, and it can be difficult to reach consensus - but that is the essence of democracy. Only in a despotic regime can complex issues be solved by the whim of a tyrant.

Austin Bay reminds us of what he wrote a few years ago, regarding the difficulties of the task at hand:

"Pity Gen. Tommy Franks or, for that matter, any American military commander tasked with overseeing a post-Saddam Baghdad. For in that amorphous, dicey phase the Pentagon calls 'war termination' ... U.S. and allied forces liberating Iraq will attempt -- more or less simultaneously -- to end combat operations, cork public passions, disarm Iraqi battalions, bury the dead, generate electricity, pump potable water, bring law out of embittering lawlessness, empty jails of political prisoners, pack jails with criminals, turn armed partisans into peaceful citizens, re-arm local cops who were once enemy infantry, shoot terrorists, thwart chiselers, carpetbaggers and black-marketeers, fix sewers, feed refugees, patch potholes and get trash trucks rolling, and accomplish all this under the lidless gaze of Peter Jennings and Al Jazeera."

He was spot on then, and it is truly remarkable that in just a few years much of the above has been accomplished and one of the worst nations in the Middle East is on its way to becoming the best. The Islamo-fascists have acknowledged that a democratic Iraq is the most grave threat to their movement, if only they could convince the American left.

In another love letter between terrorists this fear is re-confirmed. Apparently, (and contrary to what many reporters believe) the insurgency is not invincible, and apparently Zarqawi's strategy of indifferent slaughter of Muslims and beheading snuff films has had the effect of offending the sensibilities of the Arab Street. Austin Bay has the latest Zarqawi love letter thoroughly covered, go check it out.

posted by Paul  permalink | |