The end of Arab Iraq
AL-AHRAM: If Iraqis do not reach the conviction that they are all first and foremost Iraqis, the country itself will degenerate into civil strife that will have far reaching regional repercussions.
The draft constitution of Iraq is subject to heated debate, the intensity of which has been fuelled by rumours that Washington provided the template and that it is now in such a rush to see it completed that President George W Bush personally called up Iraqi leaders to help overcome the difficulties encountered with the country's Sunnis. Peter Galbraith, former US ambassador to Croatia and currently charged with monitoring the progress of the constitution, offers some insight into Washington's thinking on the matter. Rather than dividing the country, he said, the proposed constitution is tailored to a country that is already divided. Drawing up a constitution that would artificially bind three divergent societies would create only friction, violence and civil war. "It's not a problem if a country breaks up, only if it breaks up violently," he said, adding, "Iraq wasn't created by God. It was created by Winston Churchill after World War I."
The Bush administration easily shrugs off the accusation that it is the architect of the Iraqi constitution. It argues that it drew up the constitutions of Japan and Germany during its occupation of those countries after World War II, and sees no reason why it should not do the same for Iraq, which was no less hostile to democracy, peace and liberty. As Nazism was the disease that led Germany to war against the rest of Europe, the US was determined to eliminate all manifestations and sources of Nazi ideology and behaviour. It outlawed the Nazi Party, rounded up former Nazi members and ensured that the constitution contained clauses prohibiting the display of Nazi emblems and all forms of Nazi propaganda. The US was equally keen to eliminate the militarist creed that had driven Japan's brutal belligerency in the 1930s and 1940s. The Japanese constitution it drafted sought to create a total rupture with that bellicose past and it therefore prohibited the creation of a new army and it simultaneously placed great emphasis on the democratic structures that would obviate against a resurgence of militarist hierarchism. The Bush administration applied the same approach to Iraq whose Baath Party it placed in the same category as Germany's Nazi Party and Japan's military elite. Not surprisingly, therefore, the new constitution not only bans the Baath Party, but gives new status to a national committee that works in coordination with judicial and executive authorities to purge former Baath members from government organisations and to bring the most prominent of these to trial.
But can Iraq's Baath Party truly be equated to Germany's Nazi Party and the pre-World War II Japanese militarist creed? Read more
The writer is former assistant to the Egyptian foreign minister
The draft constitution of Iraq is subject to heated debate, the intensity of which has been fuelled by rumours that Washington provided the template and that it is now in such a rush to see it completed that President George W Bush personally called up Iraqi leaders to help overcome the difficulties encountered with the country's Sunnis. Peter Galbraith, former US ambassador to Croatia and currently charged with monitoring the progress of the constitution, offers some insight into Washington's thinking on the matter. Rather than dividing the country, he said, the proposed constitution is tailored to a country that is already divided. Drawing up a constitution that would artificially bind three divergent societies would create only friction, violence and civil war. "It's not a problem if a country breaks up, only if it breaks up violently," he said, adding, "Iraq wasn't created by God. It was created by Winston Churchill after World War I."
The Bush administration easily shrugs off the accusation that it is the architect of the Iraqi constitution. It argues that it drew up the constitutions of Japan and Germany during its occupation of those countries after World War II, and sees no reason why it should not do the same for Iraq, which was no less hostile to democracy, peace and liberty. As Nazism was the disease that led Germany to war against the rest of Europe, the US was determined to eliminate all manifestations and sources of Nazi ideology and behaviour. It outlawed the Nazi Party, rounded up former Nazi members and ensured that the constitution contained clauses prohibiting the display of Nazi emblems and all forms of Nazi propaganda. The US was equally keen to eliminate the militarist creed that had driven Japan's brutal belligerency in the 1930s and 1940s. The Japanese constitution it drafted sought to create a total rupture with that bellicose past and it therefore prohibited the creation of a new army and it simultaneously placed great emphasis on the democratic structures that would obviate against a resurgence of militarist hierarchism. The Bush administration applied the same approach to Iraq whose Baath Party it placed in the same category as Germany's Nazi Party and Japan's military elite. Not surprisingly, therefore, the new constitution not only bans the Baath Party, but gives new status to a national committee that works in coordination with judicial and executive authorities to purge former Baath members from government organisations and to bring the most prominent of these to trial.
But can Iraq's Baath Party truly be equated to Germany's Nazi Party and the pre-World War II Japanese militarist creed? Read more
The writer is former assistant to the Egyptian foreign minister
posted by exoplanet at 1:00 AM
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