Can someone please explain some things to me?
1. Why this petulant attitude toward the Iraqi Constitution?

2Does no one realize that the US Constitution took years to write, perfect, and ratify? During the construction of the US Constitution, there were often vehement disagreements and even fistfights (Jefferson and Madison punching eachother in the nose is kind of an amusing thought)

3 Is it simply because Bush is placing so much upon the completion of the Iraqi Constitution that his opponents nearly cheer when the process encounters a hiccup?

I'm not trying to be a smart-@$$ here, I've just been out of the loop in terms of the news and would like some insight. Chau, mis amigos.

They should just give up and ask the Sunnis and Baathists to lord over them again. They obviously can't HANDLE democracy. They're not ready for it. Don't you read Juan Cole, Fitz? Orientalists/Occidentalists westerners hypocrisy Halliburton BushHItler goes Boom.

Yes, any criticism of our handling of Iraq obviously means that think the Iraqis are hopeless primitives and not ready for democracy. Want the Baathists back? Right. Juan Cole, good one.
I don't know who takes this more seriously because a continued failed state wracked by sectarian violence in the heart of the Middle East is not what anybody wants! I don't revel in the anchor for al-Iraqiya almost crying when its announced they didn't finish the constitution nor do I applaud when American soldiers keep getting killed because they don't have the right equipment or jump up and down when hundreds of civilians are killed every week by suicide car bombers. IT'S FUCKING CRIMINAL!
Frankly I'm glad that the Iraqis don't feel bound by timelines we created, timelines more geared towards American domestic political considerations than anything else. Where's your criticism of the American ambassador's heavy-handed interventions in the political process among Iraqis? Furthermore, you often talk about how the President does things because their right not because their politically expedient, does that include okaying a Sharia-based legal system and a agreement on federalism that is a deal-breaker for the Sunnis? If sovereignty means anything then it should be up to the Iraqis to decide to curtail freedoms currently enjoyed by Iraqi women, if they want to ally themselves with Iran, fine, and if they want a system that may break apart in a civil war a little bit later that's fine too but I'm not sure that's what we signed onto here and the President, and you, won't seem to address it. All we want is a little more fucking honesty about what we hope to see and can realistically accomplish in Iraq and fewer platitudes about WWII or the American Revolution. Hope only works so long and unless you're gonna go the David Ignatius route and say that after almost thirty years of lawlessness and civil war that Lebanon obviously came out fine why be afraid of talking about the problems we and the Iraqi people face right now.

Ahh, J. Scott uses the old strawman--because we argue that Bush blew this one, we obviously want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. No, Scott, what we want is Bush to really do what is needed in this case which was to set up the whole process much better. Aaah, but you argue what good is it to argue for the process to be changed when its too late anyway?

The answer is that Bush's behavior must be shown to be the reckless disregard that it is for history. Because we can't have anyone do this shit again. Lincoln argued strenously against the Mexican War on the floor of the Congress, even thought the events occured before he was even elected. Why? Because he took the long view. He knew that these mistakes would haunt the U.S. unless there was a solid record of dissent on the war.

Furthermore, we NEVER had an opportunity for input on Iraq. Arguing at any time was, as experience has shown, futile. The Iraq mess is what we get for not having this opportunity. Time for Bush to give others input. He's incompetent. That's what happens when Rove runs the foriegn policy.

This argument is in the same category as the "they don't want/think "brown people" can have democracy" or "they are anti-Catholic because they are asking a judge who happens to be Catholic about abortion rights." Nobody buys that shit anymore. Nobody.

Fitz-- I wish this situation was similar to the writing of the American Constitution and we only had to worry about fist-fights and hurt pride. I think in this case the equivalent would be the French occupying the colonies after the Revolution, writing the Articles of Confederation, and then trying to broker a Constitution deal between Congregationalists, Baptists and Presbyterians while most of the mid-Atlantic states are in revolt. Democracy is a process and requires time and continued practice to take root as seen in post-war Germany and Japan but beyond that its hard to see the similarities. Fred Kaplan pretty much demolished the analogy in detail over at Slate last Friday.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2124691/?nav=ais

I left out that even when we signed our constitution it took fighting the bloodiest war in American history, the Civil War, to settle unresolved issues.

"...I'm glad that the Iraqis don't feel bound by timelines we created, timelines more geared towards American domestic political considerations than anything else."

Well, we can at least agree on that. Sorry for the stupid snarky comment earlier, I'm a bit weary.

RM,

I wasn't directly comparing our Constitution to that of the Iraqis. What I WAS trying to compare was the weight these documents carry. I just have to smile when I read, hear, or see people freak out because the completion of the Constitution has been delayed...They're not writing an F**king chain-letter here.
Sometimes I feel as though these confounded talking heads think the Constitution should've been completed in a weekend.

As I've argued before, one of the big problems is that we let Shia religous leaders essentially dictate the pace of developments here, and then we put in drop dead lines which became useful anvils for the insurgents to pound on. This was done for U.S. domestic political purposes, to show that "progress" was being made. Instead it made Iraqi democracy vulnerable to the gun.

True, enough. Like I said earlier I don't like the idea of deadlines especially ones the Iraqis really didn't have much of a say in setting. The talking heads are looking for a story like the Jan. elections and our gov't is too busy saying things are going great to prepare anybody for the fact that this is a messy process and whatever compromises are made might not prevent the rejection of the document by one group or another. Since this is one more thing affecting our presence in Iraq that didn't go according to plan its hard to keep a lid on the criticism.

The reason people are freaking out is precisely because the BUSH Administration set those deadlines in stone in order to assure that the documents got done. They were written directly in to the transitional constitution. BUSH wrote them in there. They made a big deal about them. And they now have to pay the price for doing so. It is a problem that the Iraqis can't come together. And it is a problem that we aren't leaning hard enough on them to get it fixed. Finally, the worst problem is that we don't have enough political legitimacy in the country to do so.

Since when does lack of "political legitimacy" prevent our imperial government from doing anything?

People don't listen to us. The one thing we can't do is order people around. Our ability to put pressure on various parties is directly related to our legitimacy and power in the country. We've shown ourselves unable to protect the Iraqi people, or provide them with power or water. Our value to Iraqis is thus less. That's why the Shia can push through this Islamic government crap on the people there. If we had come in with enough troops and gotten the job done, we would have much more pull with the parties. They would need us more and a threat to pull out would have much more force. We are a laughing stock there.

These are the key lessons that Bush didn't learn in the first months and hasn't learned yet.

BTW, I cannot recommend Salaam Pax enough. He's an incredible mix of Western Culture (esp. 80's Brit Pop) and regular guy gay Shia from Baghdad. He's a keeper. He's a blog star, baby.

RM's point that a key difference between the drafting of America's constitution and the imperial dog and pony show currently being pimped Gobbles style over the nightly news is the presence of +135K US Troops (a number soon to increase by 15K despite Mr. Danger's claims that an increase in troop levels was not needed to administer this imperial cluster fuck) is right on.

That said, I feel like this conversation has shied away from the crux of the entire situation in Iraq: The main source of violence in Iraq is and has been the US Occupation. Although this may have been hinted at, not once did I see anyone spell this out in the simple and absolute terms that we must use when dealing with clear facts. You can keep pictures of the bloodbath that is the occupation out of the mainstream press (pictures from the massacre of Falluja: http://crisispictures.org/fallujah-in-pictures/), and you can send out operatives on character assassination missions after those who point to the destruction visited upon the sovereign nation of Iraq by US imperialism in the form of intervention, establishment of a friendly dictatorship, intervention, sanctions, starvation, intervention, attempted establishment of a friendly dictatorship, instability, starvation, etc. But the existence of a hegemonic ideology that denies such actions cannot alter reality, despite claims to the contrary on the part of "history's actors."

It's not just that attempts by the Iraqi "parliament" to recreate a state-based superstructure in order to lessen the chaos that now grips that part of southwest Asia are suspect while the US occupation continues; such attempts are utterly futile because the occupation is the root cause of the instability in the first damn place.