Bush’s Iraqi Quandary

08/24/2005

Paul Munnis

When Sunni’s refused to participate in the Iraqi election they boycotted it. The Bush team insisted that the elections be ratified and that Iraqi nation building carry-on in spite of the lack of participation by the Sunni’s. It did and in time the Sunni’s came to realize that they had goofed. Iraq was going to have a new government and if they wanted to be a part of it they had to have representation in proportion to the demographics of their Party. One of every five people in Iraq are Sunni’s.

As the Constitution began to take shape the Sunni’s then realized that with only a few seats their vital interests would not be fully represented and that the majority party could steam-roll aspects of the Constitution. This left the Sunni’s with only one practical option – scuttle the Constitution, dismiss the present Assembly, hold new elections, and come back better represented.

It is clear that Iraq will not have peace unless all of the groups in Iraq are represented under their Constitution and in a fair manner. The acting Iraqi President has made it clear that the Constitution must represent all Iraqi’s and not just the majority party. The former biased election (not biased by reason of cheating but biased by a lack of Sunni participation) was an error that has haunted the creation and adoption of an Iraqi Constitution. This is not exactly anyone’s fault. In a nation inexperienced with Democracy some consequences of political decisions are not always clearly understood by the participants and passion replaces pragmatism.

To a western observer any government where the Parties represent religious groups is bound to fail. The majority is fixed and the minorities are without hope unless religious renaissance occurs. But government is about secular issues for the most part.

To an Eastern observer, the notion of a nation not ruled by Islamic Law is a travesty.

So they goofed, they got off to a false start and today the interim president of Iraq has made it clear that all of the people of Iraq must be included in the new Constitution. His reasoning is simple enough and correct. If all factions are not a party to the creation of the Constitution, if all do not accept its provisions, than Iraq will start off as a nation divided and it will fail. The Sunni’s represent 20% of the nation or one out of every five Iraqi’s. To not properly represent them and to allow for proper minority party rights simply invites civil war.

For Bush, this creates an awful scenario. He needs to find a way to convince the world that his effort at nation building is really on track. He must show that he has plan with a proper timetable and that it is being followed and as a result that Iraq is moving forward and not backwards. This false start on creating a Constitution has scuttled that perception and left Bush vulnerable to political claims that he doesn’t know what he is doing.

Congress is coming back from recess and Bush has egg on his face. His job satisfaction ratings are at an all time low and this event could bring them much lower. His domestic problems with the price of gasoline are also dragging him down yet here he is occupying a nation that is sitting on the world’s second largest oil reserve and yet he has no clear title to the very assets that could solve much of his problem.

It is possible to imagine a scenario where he throws his hands up in the air, berates the Iraqi Assembly, and puts his own Administration in to run Iraq as a U.S. protectorate and thus keeps all of the oil. Likely there are many in Washington (cum Crawford, TX) lobbying for just that scenario.

But nation building really doesn’t care much about Bush and his political woes. It is centered on the future, it needs the participation of all Iraqi’s to create a framework that they all can live with after the document is created and accepted. To do anything less means years of civil war and a huge delay in nation building. Yes, Bush could grab the oil but could he hang on to it and at what cost? The present chaos and death rates are also not acceptable to the American public. We can’t allow 800 U.S. soldiers to be killed annually to assure an oil supply for a wasteful America.

So the false start in Iraq must be accepted as a part of life. It must be rectified. Nation building must begin anew in Iraq. They are not starting over again at square one though. They have a stake in the ground in the form of the present document, they have 20 known issues with it. They know where they must begin, they know the issues, they have developed a working method of negotiation and the time-line, while injured in terms of expectations created by the Bush Administration, is not in really bad shape against the backdrop of the tasks to be done.

The problem that Bush has is that the events are eating up time and money thus by the time that real progress is made, we could see a new election in the U.S. and a new group in power. History will record the Bush Administration efforts with ignominy while giving credit to the government in power at the time of success. To put it another way, at best Bush will become a lame duck president before anything good happens in Iraq. So, they are trying hard to salvage what is there and to carry on without Sunni cooperation.

The Shiites, the majority party, are going to be upset that their rivals the Sunni’s, have been able to recover, to fully participate, and to erode the advantage that the Shiites have had. They will have to be contained and managed and it won’t be easy.

It appears that Bush has just two real choices now. Try to carry on with the handicap of the bad Sunni representation and risk civil war; or, do a restart by dissolving the present Assembly and then holding new elections. The 20 issues that remain are deep issues and ones that really need to be talked out. They are not going to be resolved with 72 hour extensions to the life of the present government.

The right thing to do for Iraq is probably a clean restart. The other options are so nakedly laden with self-interest that it will hurt Bush politically to take them.

The ball is in Bush’s court and he needs to decide what to do with it. This will be a major character test for Bush. Is it Iraq that is his first priority or is it his own political skin that he puts first? We will soon see.

Even as we write these words the intentions of the Bush Administration seems to be clarifying with today’s White House Press releases. He will send two U.S. Army Batallions (another 30,000 men) to Iraq to protect the vote of the October ratification of the Iraqi Constitution. That does not sound like a restart. It looks like they will try to play through with the current document, maybe iron out a few wrinkles, and then use propaganda to white-wash the Constitutional short-comings. It means a religious based government with the clerics in control and Islamic Law ruling and it means that much of what we are ostensibly fighting the Taliban over in Afghanistan (among other things a lack of women’s rights) will become the law in Iraq. The new 30,000 U.S. troops are there to prevent and to disrupt civil war from happening.

America will stay tuned to see what now follows.