Hey, remember Iraq?

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Hey, what ever happened to that little dalliance of the US administration...?

It seems the new constitution is being insured despite the congregating refutation of the Sunnis.

NY Times Article

It is almost comically ironic for those poor Sunnis; just when they decide to become involved in the democratic process, the process decides their decisions are not welcome.

The LNT prediction: Escalating, or if not escalating, then surely, enduring terrorism aimed against the Shiite majority. Once the constitution is signed, sealed and mounted on the wall, a silencing campaign will be mounted by Shiites and the Kurds. The US will seek to stop irridentist aid pouring over the borders of the evil neighbors Iran and Syria, paradoxically protecting the Sunni minority whom acts as the catalyst of terrorism meanwhile insuring they are incapable of mounting a conserted effort at altering the government in Baghdad.

The end result: The "course" we "stay" is going to be long and long indeed!

The chant for the 2012 US election: "Hey! Hey! It's time to go! More war in Iraq: We say no!"

 

Oh man, that sucks. If there's one thing guaranteed to turn people against you, it's rigging the democratic process. I can understand the argument being presented by the people responsible for that decision, but it's a slap in the face to the principles of democracy when only 60% of your eligible population showed up last time.

Let's hope this gets changed. After all, the only way to prevent things from getting even worse is to give everybody a chance to stand up and be heard. Continuing to disenfranchise sections of the Iraqi population will only guarantee further insurgent violence, bog the US and its allies down in Iraq, and set the table for instability for a long time to come.

 

Actually I think you will find that a long list of democracies that require super-majorities make that super-majorities of actual voters, not eligible voters. Iraq's decision looks smart to me.

 

This doesn't look any better if one considers that it's the Sunni's that above all share the USA's long term goal, a stable and functioning Iraq.

 

You have the situation completely backward: Baghdad has decreed that for the potential constitution to be declared unacceptable, two-thirds of eligible voters must veto it within a province, not two-thirds of people whom actually voted. Considering only about sixty percent of people eligible to vote actually do in Iraq, and furthermore, considering only a mere percentage of Sunnis eligible to vote actually do, the constitution has been all but guarenteed.

It is a sham vote that is upcoming. The disenfranchised Sunnis are not going to view the constitution as applicable to them in any fashion; they will use bombs to remain independent and the Shiites/Kurds will use their "official" security forces to bring them down.

With the US destroying, quite literally, the possibility of Syrian irridentism, the Sunni population is going to lose and lose big-time. It is the kind of scenerio insuring years and years of Sunni radicalization and subsequent terrorism.

 

Electoral changes worry UN

At least this is not going uncontested. Given that Sunnis have a sufficient majority in 4 provinces to defeat the constitution (a 2/3 majority "no" is only required in 3 provinces), it only gives more credence to claims of process corruption.

On the one hand, Sunnis could be obstructionist and vote down the constitution. On the other, it's utterly reprehensible to attempt to change the rules to the specific detriment of that group of people, as they are the principal group that are challenging the constution. I just hope that common sense prevails before the vote to reverse that decision, and LNT's vision doesn't come to fruition.

 

Apparently, Iraqi lawmakers read my posts...

OK, maybe it was the UN instead.

The old voting standards have been restored.

 

This whole process seems backwards to me. In most democracies, you need a super-majority to accept a constitution, not a super-majority to say it is unacceptable. This is sort of taken care of in the fact that if only 3 provinces meet the standard, it would still block the Constitution's acceptance. However, it still seems strange that you could have 60% of the entire population vote "no" to the Constitution, and it would still be accepted provided that no more that 2 provinces exceeded 67%.