Iraq’s Constitution

It seems to me that the story of Iraq’s constitution pretty well trumps everything else that’s going on the world these days as a new story, with all respect to the heroic Cindy Sheehan and to snake-oil peddler Deepak Chopra. Unfortunately, there’s not as much intelligent commentary as I’d like to see.

The Left’s Iraq whiz, Juan Cole, is pretty mealy-mouthed about it, relying on the New York Times to analyze it for him:

I don’t know how this very loose federal system will work, and the granting of the right to form provincial federations seems to me dangerous. And I have a sinking feeling that rigid interpretations of Islamic canon law may end up trumping some of the beautiful human rights otherwise promised.

Back in the real world, all of Iraq’s petroleum production was knocked out on Monday.

…and changing the subject as quickly as possible.

Michael Barone links opinion pieces from reliable sources, David Brooks and the WSJ, which wouldn’t be too persuasive to our dovish brethren on account of their reliance on ad hominem reasoning.

The Brooks piece extensively quotes Bush critic Peter Galbraith, who’s unmistakably enthusiastic about the constitution:

“The Bush administration finally did something right in brokering this constitution,” Galbraith exclaimed, then added: “This is the only possible deal that can bring stability. … I do believe it might save the country.”

…Galbraith says he is frustrated with all the American critics who argue that the constitution divides the country. The country is already divided, he says, and drawing up a constitution that would artificially bind three divergent societies together would create only friction, violence and civil war. “It’s not a problem if a country breaks up, only if it breaks up violently,” Galbraith says. “Iraq wasn’t created by God. It was created by Winston Churchill.”

It looks like a good deal to me, but I’m a crazy tin-foil hat wearing Bush-backer, so what do I know?

My thought experiement goes something like this: suppose you had to write a new constitutiuon for the US today, which of course had to be acceptable to Red-state America (AKA “Jesusland”), Blue-state America (AKA “Air America Land”), and to the masses of moderates who live purple and free. Would it be much different from the document the Iraqis are developing?

My guess is that it wouldn’t be.