An Endless Road to Nowhere
The Iraqi Constitution has been drafted, voted on, and approved by the citizens of Iraq. And it was suggested last year, that after such a step forward we would be able to withdrawal our troops from Iraq… but this is not likely to happen. It seems every time we reach a milestone in Iraq that would allow us to leave, we find another milestone on the horizon that still needs to be passed.
Even though Iraq now has the facade of a functioning government and a Constitution it is excluding a section of its population from having effective representation in that government. What I am speaking of is our allowance of the provisional Iraqi government to create an anti-Baathification committee which checks each Sunni who wishes to either work for the government or be a government recognized leader of the Sunni people. Any person who was once a member of the Baath party is excluded from public service jobs and political office. Considering that the Baath party was mostly made up of Sunnis… and to get a job in the government as a Sunni, you had to be member of the party, they are in effect excluding all of the most experienced leaders of the Sunni people from the political process. Any person who already holds legitimacy to the Sunni people is unable to serve the interests of those people.
It is because of this lack of effective representation that there are rules in the Constitution that make Kurdish and Shiite controlled provinces able to choose to ignore laws created by the Federal governing body… a privilege not enjoyed by the Sunni controlled provinces. So in effect Kurdish and Shiite leaders can create draconian and destructive laws and then ignore them. These are not the makings of a fair and just Constitution that will support a democratic republic in that region. It is a recipe for apartheid and oppression that can only lead to civil war and incite further violence in the Middle East.
Consequently the Sunnis rightly feel like they are being punished for the actions of Saddam Hussein. The Sunnis are being transformed from a position of supremacy into a disaffected minority in Iraq, and history has shown that such disaffected minorities will strike out violently against their perceived oppressors. This is a situation that has been repeated over and over and over again, and we are letting it happen. Actually we are encouraging it to happen, I am not sure if this is by design or by incompetence… but we are allowing an environment to be created in Iraq that guarantees there will not be any peace in that country for at least a decade.
Add to this the fact that we have yet to succeed to create a coherent police or defense force among the Iraqis that can fight without our assistance, and we see that the next milestone will keep us in Iraq for at least another year maybe more. Why has this happened? Why have we allowed this to happen?
We went into Iraq without a plan on how to win the peace. Our only plan was to invade, and topple Saddam… it is obvious we didn’t plan for anything past that, expecting the Iraqi people to miraculously form a spontaneous democratic republic that praised and loved us. Where do we go from here?
My answer is that we don’t do anything else in Iraq, we have already done enough damage and our very presence is a rallying point for terrorists and insurgents. We need to approach the UN and the Arab League with our hat in our hand and admit the mistake that we made. We then need to ask them very politely for their assistance in bringing peace to Iraq and helping it finish its transformation into a republic that treats all its citizens equitably. But this is not going to happen any time in the near future; we are still too filled with the hubris of being the only remaining super power to admit any of our mistakes. So we shall remain in Iraq, pouring a billion a month and our young men and women into a black hole, with no discernible bottom.