Talk About The Glass Half-Empty Approach
Predictably, Professor Juan Cole of the University of Michigan is not pleased that Iraq now apparently has a legal document to prop up its nascent democracy:
…[T]he constitution appears to have been soundly rejected in two Sunni provinces, indicating deep opposition to the document in the areas most crucial to ending the insurgency and binding Iraq’s political wounds.
“This thing is an enormous fiasco,” said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan historian and a specialist on Shiite Islam. He said having such a solid bloc in opposition to the constitution “really undermines its legitimacy, and this result guarantees the guerrilla war will go on.”
Really now, it’s quite astonishing to watch the goalpost moving Bush’s critics will undergo to avoid a word of praise. Yes, two Sunni provinces apparently heavily rejected the Constitution – and two Sunni provinces apparently didn’t. Cole’s response is nonsense. Part of democracy is the ability to voice opposition. Far more troubling to Cole should be those 99% results we see so often in the Middle East.
As to the guerilla war going on…of course it will. It may go on for years. The more Sunnis become wrapped up in electoral processes, though, the more difficult it will be for the terrorists to find safe haven. The December elections will bring even greater Sunni participation in the process, a fact not lost on the White House:
Now, the White House’s attention will turn to the December elections to replace the current interim government and elect a new National Assembly. Bush administration officials have argued that Saturday’s vote, with increased participation by Sunni Arabs, will draw them into the political process and boost their representation in the Iraqi parliament.What the referendum “will certainly help to do is to broaden the base of the political process, those who are casting their lot with the political process, which means those who are either sitting on the fence or are supportive somehow of the violence will diminish,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in London. “Ultimately, insurgencies have to be defeated politically. You defeat them by sapping them of their political support and increasingly Iraqis are throwing their support behind the political process, not behind the violence.”
In the December election, provinces will receive proportional representation so even a low turnout in Sunni provinces will still result in more Sunni Arabs being sent to the legislature. In the January elections for the interim parliament, Sunni representation was especially low because most Sunnis boycotted the elections while Kurds largely voted for a Kurdish coalition and Shiites backed a coalition of Shiite Islamist parties.
The war goes on, but the outcome is becoming more secure each time a free election takes place. Cole notwithstanding, that’s something to celebrate.
Half-full, half-ass opinion
Never mind the people of Iraq braved the possibility of death to vote on a new constitution.
Never mind that this latest vote puts our troops one step closer to completing their mission.
Nope, for the naysaying haters of all things related to t…
We see a new meme emerging from the Administration critics – that the Sunnis voted down the constitution. What they don’t mention is that something really incredible happened. That is that in two sunni-dominated provinces, the referendum actually passed with majority support, not just with less than a 2/3 vote against it. A week ago, this was thought to be impossible. Nobody even dared to predict that the referendum would pass with majority support in any of these provinces.
Much like the historic progress made in Afghanistan, this historic achievment will go unheralded by the chattering class in this country. That, in my opinion, is the only loss for our country (contra Mr. Cole’s paranoid hyperventelating we have been subjected to for the past couple of years) and it is a real tavesty. But more than that, it is a tragedy. Congratulations to the long-suffering people of Iraq on their newly-born democracy.
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