Your Thoughts Exactly

2,000 dead American troops…well I guess that the big round number resonated with me, and I all of a sudden was hit with the urge to get back on the bandwagon of criticizing the Bush administration on the Iraqi War. The disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, combined with the Libby indictment and the Miers’ resignation have made for a crappy week for El Presidente. In today’s Boston Globe, they covered the Bush Administration’s political strategy to shift the focus off the past failures in order to give everyone a respite from bad news. As always, when in trouble, the President falls back on the War on Terror and foreign policy. Curiously, the country finds foreign policy to be Bush’s biggest strength, when any IR major worth his or her weight in doubloons could tell you that’s a crock.

But Bush does have on newsworthy event from which he can justify his continued policy in Iraq on the basis of progress towards a Democratic and Free Middle East. On October 15, the Iraqi people ratified a Constitution. Is this a step towards democracy in the theoretical sense? Yes. Democratic governments need legal documents and rules on which to base the power relationship between the elected, the law, and the people. Unfortunately, upon taking a closer look at the facts surrounding the Constitution and its passing, I have come to the conclusion that this “progress” is in fact an empty step towards an independent Democratic Iraq. Almost as importantly, the Constitution in no way represents a step towards insuring that 2,000 American deaths does not become 3,000 American deaths sometime in 2006.

First of all, the actual document is weak and in many ways, unlike a proper constitution in that it attempts to include legislative actions in its content. The American Constitution serves two functions; to outline the powers and duties of the branches of government and to grant personal individual rights to its citizens. But the Iraqi Constitution goes further: guaranteeing healthcare and education, protection of the disabled, prohibiting violence in the home, and strangely, constitutionally mandating that the Iraqi government encourage development of the private sector. The Constitution also declares oil a public good, (probably a good thing,) declares that oil should be used for the “greatest benefit of the Iraqi people,” (a good thing) through “relying on the most modern techniques of market principles and encouraging investment.”

Excuse me? Since when did insuring investment in oil through free market principles have anything to do with creating a government? Let’s not be stupid here. “Investment”= foreign investment, since international companies (for example, Halliburton) will be able to offer the best contracts in the “free market.” What does that have to do with creating an effective government for the people of Iraq? Nothing. Oil policy, or for that matter economic, healthcare, or education policy, needs to be created after the government itself has been created. Some of the principles may be ok; inferring a basic “right to healthcare,” for example, but constitutions and legislation are different functions that shouldn’t be combined.

Of course, the entire concept of the “New Iraq” is a sham. In order to build a nation, you need some sort of peace and stability, which is obviously not present in Iraq, with bombs going off daily, unsecured borders, and areas dominated by the insurgency. Not to mention the fact that the ruling government’s source of legitimacy is not the people of Iraq, but rather the presence of a foreign army keeping them in power and shaping the constitutional process. The legislative qualities of the Iraqi Constitution are due to the United States’ presence, and the desire of the Bush Administration to hold Iraq as the model democracy for the Middle East. The varying forces and philosophies of the groups involved in the constitutional process also show themselves, and generally muddle the document. For example, Article 2: no law can contradict the rules of Islam (shariah), yet no law can contradict the laws of Democracy. Which is the ultimate authority here? What are the “laws of Democracy?” Are we talking Democracy such as Iran, where a Council of Religious Leaders has ultimate authority over legislation, while elections are still held? Later the Constitution invokes the United Nations as another ultimate source of authority. The whole document, like the country, is a mess.

But before the United States and or the Iraqi people go about solving these problems (and let’s not neglect the American influence on these proceedings,) the problem of the insurgency needs to be solved. For in a country without peace and order, the ultimate goal of the government will automatically face a situation where it will tailor itself to fight war, through suppression and exerting control over its peoples. Even in the present day U.S., with a history of freedom and democracy, this has occurred since 9/11. In a country without these histories that is used to ethnic war and totalitarian regime the suppression in the name of stability will be brutal for the Iraqi people. The first step is to get people to stop killing each other…then we can start worrying about Consitutions.