Right Wing Nut House

Boy, those Iraq’s must be gluttons for punishment.

It isn’t enough that we’ve brutally occupied their country, tortured and flayed their innocent citizens, robbed them of their oil, and tried to ram a puppet government down their throats. Now they want us to become even more involved in their affairs (Thank you sir, may I have another…):

To prevent the breakdown of Iraq’s troubled transition and a potential civil war, Iraq’s new government appealed to the Bush administration yesterday to take a much more assertive role, particularly on four key political and military issues, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

In talks with Vice President Cheney yesterday and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari requested greater U.S. and coalition help in crafting a new constitution. The deadline is now less than three months away, but deliberations have been slowed as Iraq still works on the composition of a constitutional committee.

With time running out for writing the constitution and then holding elections in December for a permanent government, Zebari warned that the United States has withdrawn too much, leaving the new government struggling to cope and endangering the long-term prospects for success.

International help in drafting their constitution would not be without precedent. Following the end of World War I, some of the most idealistic and gifted legal minds of Europe sat down with the new German government that overthrew the Kaiser and drafted what at the time was considered the “perfect” constitution. William L. Shirer describes it in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich:

“The constitution which emerged from the Assembly after six months of debate…was on paper the most liberal and democratic document of its kind the 20th century had seen, mechanically well-nigh perfect, full of ingenious and admirable devices which seemed to guarantee the working of an almost flawless democracy. The idea of cabinet government was borrowed from England and France, of a strong, popular President from the United States, of the referendum from Switzerland…”

As Shirer points out, the Weimer constitution also had its flaws not the least of which was voting by lists (as they do currently in Lebanon) which leads to a multiplicity of small, splinter parties and in Germany’s case, made a stable majority in the Reichstag impossible.

While I’m sure the Iraqi’s would be grateful for our help, it’s best that we tread cautiously in helping draft a document that will act as a basic law of the land lest our own preconceptions of “democracy” and “freedom” override what is possible in an Iraqi society racked by sectional and sectarian differences. In short, we may end up making matters worse instead of better.

As for security issues, I don’t see how much more we could be doing. Any major anti-insurgent sweeps need to be carried out by Iraqi forces for the simple reason that we’re not going to be there forever and they may as well gain the experience and self-confidence that comes with succeeding in operations of this nature. If they get into trouble, we’re there to back them up. But we can’t make the same mistake we made in Viet Nam by continuously bearing the brunt of combat operations. Back then, we failed the Vietnamese military by not giving them a chance to prove themselves until it was too late. When they did go out into the field, they were ill-prepared and not well led. Nixon’s “Vietnamization” policy was a disaster. It came after 4 years of American led combat ops and failed to adequately train a South Vietnamese army racked with corruption and ambivalence. The result was predictable.

One big help we could give to the Iraqi’s would come from our new Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Unfortunately, although named to replace John Negreponte three months ago, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has failed to hold confirmation hearings. Here’s the Captain’s take:

By the way, expect to see some mild fireworks at Khalilzad’s hearing. The Village Voice already alerted the Left that Khalilzad has — gasp! — worked for an oil company before. The nominee represented Unocal during the Clinton-era negotiations with the Taliban that hoped to establish a pipeline across Afghanistan to gain greater access to oil production in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The Ted Rall/Michael Moore contingent have long claimed that this effort was the true motivation behind the Afghanistan phase of the war on terror. This will give the Democrats an opportunity to show how far they’ve slid to the radical Left. If this thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory plays any role at Khalilzad’s hearing, we’ll know the lunatics have seized control of the asylum.

Sometimes, I think Bush does things like this just to goose the moonbats. Seriously, the clock is ticking on the constitution as the deadline is a little more than 3 months away. The Iraqi’s have made every single deadline we’ve set so far. Let’s hope they keep it that way.