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NewsDay Editorials
Sometimes muddling through is the best option in
foreign policy. That is certainly now the case for
the Bush administration in Iraq.
With President George W. Bush himself directly
intervening in negotiations to try to find a
compromise on a constitution, there can be no doubt
about the importance the White House attaches to
this moment. The best that can be said is that there
is a real political process under way, with give and
take, deadlines, extensions, behind the scenes
negotiations and attempts to find face-saving,
compromise formulas. Anybody familiar with
democratic politics would be familiar with that
often unseemly combination. But for the Iraqis, it's
a new experience.
Bush himself suggested in a speech last week a
comparison with the difficulty the founding fathers
faced in writing a constitution for the 13 colonies.
But the analogy is only partially accurate. The
founders were all white males of similar class and
religious outlook. They didn't have to contend with
three different ethnic groups with a murderous
legacy, especially the domination of Kurds and
Shiites by the minority Sunnis. And even then, the
founders were able to avoid a civil war - at that
time - by agreeing not to deal with the issue that
they all understood would split them apart, slavery.
Of course, eventually the Civil War came, and it was
bloody and terrible.
Whether there is any center that can hold in Iraq is
not likely to be determined this weekend, but in the
coming months when the constitution must be voted
upon. Now the target date is Oct. 15. If any three
of Iraq's 18 provinces votes, by a two-thirds
margin, to turn down the constitution, it will fail.
At least three of the provinces in the center of the
country have substantial Sunni majorities.
This is where the muddling-through will come in. The
two-thirds rule means that if one-third plus one of
voters in at least one of the Sunni provinces votes
in favor of the constitution, it will be adopted.
That almost certainly will guarantee that the
insurgency, largely but not exclusively coming from
the Sunnis, will continue. But the worst-case
scenario, the one that the Bush administration is
working so hard to avoid, is a complete breakdown in
the process and rejection of the constitution. That
will raise the possibility of an out and out civil
war and/or the dissolution of Iraq as a political
entity.
Muddling through is also why the administration has
no choice but to accept some aspect of the
federation plan the Kurds and Shiites have
negotiated. It gives each the authority to establish
the desired government, including one based on
Islamic law in the Shiite provinces. There is plenty
of reason to be wary about that, especially with
Iran's anti-western mullahs calling many of the
shots there. But a loose confederation more closely
reflects the reality of what Iraq is than the
centralized state Saddam Hussein's Baath Party held
together through force.
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