So how's that Iraqi Constitution going? Well, glad you asked...
Sunni Arab political leaders condemned a draft of Iraq's proposed constitution handed to them on Saturday, saying it was unlikely that they would approve the document and that it could provoke even more violence. And they scrambled to arrange meetings to revise the document even as Shiite and Kurdish leaders insisted that it would be published without substantial changes.
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"We still have some hope that we could reach something," said Saleh Mutlak, a leading Sunni member of the constitutional committee, referring to the ongoing struggles to reach agreement with his Shiite and Kurdish colleagues. "If we reach it, fair enough. If we don't, then they have to take responsibility for what happens if this constitution is passed."
Asked what the consequences of such a rupture might be, Mr. Mutlak said: "The violence will go up, the hope among the people will go down. And the extremists will be the ones who are in control of the country."
The italics, of course, are mine. What's interesting here, aside from the roadmap to oblivion that's being laid out, is the Sunni's frank admission that the cost of an unwelcome constitution will be a lot of lives. We're not dealing, at least publicly, with a Sunni establishment that wants peaceful compromise and a Sunni insurgency that wants to detonate the country, we're dealing with a scared minority entirely willing to launch a long-term, low-grade guerrilla war to eventually achieve the outcomes they seek. And since neither the Kurds nor the Shi'ites are willing to write the constitution that the Sunnis want, I don't really see how you prevent a nationalist Sunni insurgency from existing well into the future.
A week or two ago, I compared Iraq's drafting of the constitution to the Founding Fathers attempting the same thing, except with newly freed and politically empowered Blacks and Native-Americans fielding representatives in the room. I think I was mostly right, save for one thing. I forgot to mention that the Blacks are heavily, heavily armed.
