What is the real story about Shia reaction?

[salim]

My point is that writing the constitution have no thing to do with voting for it..

What we should go for is to have the constitution be approved by absolute majority.. Which means all the minorities would have a say on it.

Agree with you no rely on promises..

 

Writing the constitution is a sensative process, having in mind two issues

1- All the conspiracy theory behind the Americans coming to change our Islamic culture. Any Constitution written by appointed people might make the constitution looks suspicious to Iraqis. . I remember when an Egyptian Minster was proposing some Arabs to write or to help writing it, there was a shock among Iraqis about how dare he is to !

 

2- having all suffering by Iraqis from the domination of "some minority being supported by external forces" ,the re domination is a real concern among Iraqis..

We don't want the same British appointed ruler experience to take over again..

 

 

It is a real opportunity for a real democratic system in the MD.. PLEASE don't let it go just for some un realistic doubts!

We don't want to ride a horse rather than a car , just becuase some one did that before .. Americans went through a different process because there was no car at that time.. And we deserve going to the best directly..

[Averroes]

Salim, thank you for the points 1) and 2), of which i was only vaguely aware. We can certainly sympathize with the British experience.

 

To use you analogy, what we are afraid of is that by rushing, iraq may end up with a horse. As you know, automobiles make no sense unless their are adequate roads for them. In other words, the automobile would take more preparation than a horse as a solution.

 

Although this may not allay your fears, i must point to the Afghan experience. While imperfect (and politics is always imperfect), an Afghan method was used to select those who selected the interim government and wrote the constitution. In the end, they came out with an "Islamic Republic." You should realize that Americans think that government and religion should be separate. If the Americans had had any influence on the resulting government constitution, you can bet your bottom dinar that Afghanistan would not be an Islamic Republic. But, it was more important for America that Afghanistan be "of the Afgans, for the Afghans, and by the Afghans."

 

btw, I never liked the GC idea, but I thought it was workable in the interim as long as Iraqis could buy into it a bit. My own personal prejudice, and I speak for myself here, is that one measure of any successful iraqi government is that it does not have Chalabi. I consider him to be ambitious and dangerous. obviously, i do not have Bush's ear.

[salim]

We can go with the British analogy!, what I am afraid about is getting our kids run into another 9/11 after one another century!

 

Indeed my in take about getting over a horse is that with car I can keep steering it on a well designed roads. With a horse you may end up going no where!

As for the preparation for democracy , having majority of Iraqis believe in a non Islamic state " by faith not only by analogy", also having the majority experienced the bad of tyranny, I think we are almost there. What a lot of westerners afraid about of having a real democracy is the issue of turning to an Islamic state by choice..

The problem with this realistic analogy is it is based on some previous experiences with Islamic countries.. What is missing here is that the majority Shiat in Iraq doesn't believe in that by faith. Iraq is only Arab country with majority Shia..

The last thing to compare Iraq to is Afghan one. For two reasons

1- Majority in Afghanistan is Sunni with nomadic background, just like our Trainglees.. With all sympathy to power and rule !

2- The real motive behind the Iraqi democracy exercise is to sell abroad.. You can't sell a bad product..

 

As far as GC , most Iraqis that I had talked to , are fan of the GC, the issue they would like them to rule through Iraqi decision and not being appointed. Some thing that may raise the same concern with any appointed committee.

 

By the way what you don't like with Chalabi, indeed making him very popular inside Iraq..

[Lee C.]

Questions, if I may ask:

 

1) Do a majority of the Sunni Arabs have the same view of Iraq with a representative government as does Salim?

 

2) If an absolute majority of Iraqi, consisting of Shia and Sunni Kurd can agree on a Constitution, but the majority of the Sunni Arab refuse, will not the Sunni Arabs continue to resist and fight?

 

In short, can Iraq get a majority of the Sunni Arab to go along with the rest? I am not talking about the Ba'athi and Al-Adwah and the terrorist types, but about the Sunni Arab in general. I am thinking that if the majority of the Sunni Arabs agree to a Constitution, then the Ba'athi shall fail and fall apart soon after. (Oh, and there are a significant number of Shia Kurds, are there not?)

[Guest Guest]

Avverroes, I believe you are misrepresenting American history. There were only white-male landowners who were allowed to be involved with the growing republic. This is another reason why I keep insisting that our (The United States) only reason for being in Iraq is a military/business strategic intention. The insistence for ignoring Sistani is a strategic one, Bremmer wants to ensure that America is the hand in the puppet.

 

The fact that so many Americans are severely ignorant concerning the work and philosophical nature of our own Republic proves that our governments work should be treated with suspicion. You keep saying that Americans mistrust government that is wrong. Some Americans mis-trust government contingent on who is running the government. The fact that so many Republicans were quick to embrace the State/government in such a huge way when a Republican is in office proves this.

[Guest Guest]

The United States did not mind the Islamic State model for Afghanistan. However, remember there are many within the Bush administration (who would like to invade Syria and Iran next) and a strong Islamic-Iraq would not allow an invasion of its neighbors—this is the primary concern—NOT DEMOCRACY!!!

[George B.]

Iraqi council sides with U.S., not cleric

 

BAGHDAD, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- A majority of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council is supporting a U.S. plan to select a provisional government and disavowing a Muslim cleric's advice.

 

As a result of intense lobbying over the past few days by Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator for Iraq, the council could be in for a showdown with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who has insisted a provisional government be chosen through a national election.

 

"We are facing a very tense situation, perhaps the most tense since the end of the war," one of the council's Shiite members told the Washington Post. "None of us wants a confrontation, but we have to realize we are traveling down a road that could lead to a very big confrontation."

 

Council members and officials with the U.S.-led occupation authority said they remained hopeful Sistani's objections could be overcome with minor revisions to the plan but expressed an unwillingness to bend on the issue of general elections, on the grounds a national ballot would delay an agreed-upon handover of sovereignty, which is to take place by June 30.

 

Copyright 2003 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

[Lee C.]

The United States did not mind the Islamic State model for Afghanistan. However, remember there are many within the Bush administration (who would like to invade Syria and Iran next) and a strong Islamic-Iraq would not allow an invasion of its neighbors—this is the primary concern—NOT DEMOCRACY!!!

This is total foolishness! We are still trying to figure out how to help make a decent government in Iraq, and you are already having the U.S. invading Syria and Iran?

 

Does anybody in their right mind actually believe that it serves the U.S. interest to run havoc across the middle east and leave destruction behind it?

 

Does anybody believe that the U.S. is so stupid as to think we have enough soldiers to control Iraq, Syria, and Iran? We are having enough trouble getting the streets safe in Baghdad!

 

Idiots post here. Or they think Iraqis are idiots to believe them.

[salim]

Lee,

I would say that the issue is not Sunni Arab against Kurd Suni's and Shia Arab..

As Abu Ayat but it in his article, some Outsider Arabs, Baathist and Wahabee's keep telling Sunni Arab in Iraq that Democracy is the rule of majority which means no say for them in future Iraq.. Most Intellectuals don't agree with this, but it might need time to make it clearer to others.

 

Your question/concern is very realistic though!

[George B.]

Lee,

 

Cheney's new adviser has sights on Syria

WASHINGTON - A neo-conservative strategist who has long called for the United States and Israel to work together to "roll back" the Ba'ath-led government in Syria, has been quietly appointed as a Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

 

'Israelization' of U.S. Middle East policy proceeds apace

BEIRUT -- Few disputed at the time that Israel was a factor that pushed U.S. President George W. Bush to go to war on Iraq. Just how much weight it had among all the other factors was the only controversial question. But what is clear, six months on, is that Israel is now a very important one indeed in the stumbling neoimperial venture that Iraq has become.

 

Syria sanctions could lead to invasion by United States

WASHINGTON: A tough sanctions measure approved by Congress against Syria on Tuesday could lead to a future invasion of Syria, a prominent US lawmaker said.

 

Senator Robert Byrd, a long-serving member in the US Congress and outspoken critic of US military policy in the Middle East, said on Tuesday in voting against the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Act that he feared the bill would be misused by US policy makers to justify future military action against Damascus.

[George B.]

Pentagon official: US may take action against Syria

Pentagon adviser Richard Perle said Tuesday that the recent Israeli attack on an alleged training camp for Palestinian militants in Syria was long overdue and that he would not rule out U.S. military action against the Arab state.

 

Perle, a close adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, spoke at a Jerusalem conference of conservatives from the United States and Israel.

 

Is Syria Next?

There’s been a lot of speculation that Iraq was just the first in a line of nettlesome problems in the Middle East that neo-cons wanted to “solve.” Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said in an interview almost a year ago that Iran should be the next target. However, it seems Washington has decided to step up its campaign against Syria.

 

Is Syria next on the US hit-list?

Israel's Infrastructures Minister Joseph Paritzky has ordered an assessment of the condition of an old pipeline to the city of Haifa from Mosul in Iraq, the influential Israeli daily Ha'aretz has reported.

 

The pipeline, which used to provide Haifa (now in Israel) with oil until 1948, passes through Syria. And given the lashing Syria has received from the US and Britain lately - including President Bush's statement on Sunday that it was holding chemical weapons - the report gains significance.Syria might well be next on the US hit-list for a "regime change" - the purpose being to restart the defunct Mosul-Haifa pipeline and solve Israel's oil needs.

 

And the Iraq war, after all, might prove to be just the first chapter in this project. The minister's order of assessing the pipeline's condition shows that Israel is reasonably sure it will be able to use it again, and soon. The pipeline would save Israel millions of dollars it currently spends to buy oil from Russia.

 

It will also help the US diversify its own supplies of oil. The pipeline was closed to Haifa after the formation of Israel, and was redirected to Syria. There have been several attempts since to restart the flow to Haifa, the daily says.

 

Is Syria next?

Amid the squat concrete towers and traffic bridges of the new and expanding Damascus, a few mud-brick houses endure like Palaeolithic mammals resisting the inevitability of extinction. Massive apartment blocks modelled on those of the Soviet Union and hotels straight from the American Midwest are transforming the Syrian capital into an Occidental artefact. Oriental structures, struggling under the weight of satellite receivers large enough for families to sleep in, survive on sufferance. Most stand in a state of near destruction, a wall down here, doors falling from hinges there, prisoners shaved for execution. Posterity can lay the blame on Syria's modern rulers: the French, who between 1920 and 1946 cleared acres of labyrinthine quarters to make room for cannon and tanks to control the natives; the few elected and many military regimes who succeeded them; and, latterly, the Baath Party/Army/ Intelligence Service junta that has been in place since 1970. Only in a small corner of today's Damascus, demarcated by the broad stone walls of the Old City, are ancient houses being restored and gentrified after generations of neglect. Syrians who for years avoided the dilapidated bazaars are revisiting the charm of mud and wood, stone and marble, running fountains and cobbled paths too narrow for cars. A few landlords are turning their empty palaces into hotels, restaurants and bars where the young stay late into the night in jasmine-scented courtyards to savour water pipes as their ancestors did in Ottoman times.

 

Is Syria Next?

Shortly after 9/11, the government received an extraordinary gift of hundreds of files on Al Qaeda, crucial data on the activities of radical Islamist cells throughout the Middle East and Europe and intelligence about future terrorist plans. These dossiers did not come from Israel or Saudi Arabia, whose kingdom appeared more concerned at the time with securing safe passage for members of the bin Laden family living in the United States, but--as Seymour Hersh revealed in the July 28 New Yorker--from Syria. One CIA analyst told Hersh, "the quality and quantity of information from Syria exceeded the agency's expectations." Yet, the analyst added, the Syrians "got little in return for it."

 

Anyone want my research on the invasion of Iran?

[George B.]

This is total foolishness! We are still trying to figure out how to help make a decent government in Iraq, and you are already having the U.S. invading Syria and Iran?

The United States government does not care to install a democratic government...only one that will do its bidding in the region!

[Averroes]

Salim, the point of my mentioning Afghanistan was not to compare it with Iraq, but to give a recent example where America (and the UN) allowed the people of a nation to chose a form of government that we might not have chosen. It is true that some Americans fear that "Iraq might choose an Islamic government" but that would mean to us that democracy had failed, since we believe that no democracy can recognize and institutionalize religion. We think that it would make the Chaldeans, for instance, second class citizens.

 

My antipathy for Chalabi is personal, based on intuition. I have observed him for some years. i think he is dishonest, ambitious, and likely more concerned with his own gain than Iraq. But, as I say, i am not arguing for this, just reporting my own intuitions.

 

I agree with Bush that no one should say that the iraqis are "unprepared for democracy." But the insecurities you have addressed with lee must be addressed in such a way that all voters in the first election can feel comfortable with the result.

 

With a sideways glance at the ranting GB, i might add that I am not representing the American experience as perfection, neither at the beginning, where we had difficulties, nor now. Any society is a work in progress. Our founding fathers lay down a constitution which allowed us to approach the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, even when those same fathers could not institute such a society in their times. We still are in pursuit of that ideal.

[Lee C.]

George B.

 

I notice that you have posted another set of articles and now you have directed them to me. You mentioned me specifically by name.

 

Please do not do that again.

 

I have said to another, anonymous guest, that his ideas were total foolishness. If you continue to try to get my attention I am afraid I will have to say that to you also.

 

You are no friend of progress as I can well see. You dislike the current American government; well I dislike the real George Bush too, but I do not go about trying to tear down the idea of a free Iraq just because I dislike Bush.

 

I see you as a small terrorist in the market; except you throw your bombs into the place where people are discussing real ideas, whereas real terrorists throw their bombs into markets with real people just trying to buy food and other real things.

 

Do not try to engage me in discussion. I consider you a bad influence; I consider you an enemy of progress for your own petty reasons, I will ignore you if I can, but if I must deal with you, I will not be kind.

[salim]

Averroes,

 

Let us make our debate more informative :-)

 

"It is true that some Americans fear that "Iraq might choose an Islamic government" "

 

There is no relation between having Iraqis choosing those who write the constitution and the possibility of Islamic government.

 

As far as we have the vote on the constitution based on the absolute majority.. There is no way that a majority constitution would be a nursery for any sort of dictatorship, including Islamic government..

 

It is on contrary, if you force some temporary non democratic mechanism that is easier to implement, you might end up doing nothing.And you might loss the real cause of getting there with all the sacrifices!

 

As for the Afghan, what I meant is that it might be good for Afghani but not for Iraq case. As I said get a car but it on the right one way road.. Don't ride a horse it might buy nothing.

 

 

Your quote "My antipathy for Chalabi is personal, based on intuition. I have observed him for some years"

 

May I ask you to give a specific example to what you had observed?

 

Your quote "But the insecurities you have addressed with lee must be addressed in such a way that all voters in the first election can feel comfortable with the result."

 

That is exactly what I meant by Absolute majority.. Yet there is still Lee's good point, what if some minority keep refusing the constitution..

I have no answer now.. But based on the great job that GC already did in cooperating between different factions..I am sure there will be no such dead lock so as to scarify the great opportunity of having a real democratic system in MD for the first time in history. That is exactly what most Iraqis are crying for today, Alsystani is just reflecting their feelings

 

Your Quote" Our founding fathers lay down a constitution which allowed us to approach the ideals of the Declaration of Independence, even when those same fathers could not institute such a society in their times"

 

Let me ask every one to be as courageous as those great fathers, let us complete their great job by having their dreams all over the world especially MD.