Ill-fated draft / Iraq's constitution will split the country

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05242/562099.stm

Editorial: Ill-fated draft / Iraq's constitution will split the country
Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

After several months of deliberations and nearly 2-1/2 years into the war, Iraqis in principle completed work Sunday on a draft constitution.

The Shiites and Kurds, together making up an estimated 80 percent of the population, seem to like it, although schisms continue to exist among both groups. The Sunnis, who were dominant in an independent Iraq between 1932 and 2003, when the United States attacked, don't like it at all.

The Sunnis' strategy now is basically to sabotage the constitutional process. One way is to vote it down in the three or four provinces where they are a majority, thus sending it back to the drawing board and requiring new parliamentary elections in December. Another would be to boycott the October referendum, signaling their disassociation from the process. A third, which their militants will pursue in any case, is to continue the drumfire of killing that underlines their resistance to American and Iraqi interim government rule.

<snip>

The draft constitution is almost inevitably ill-fated in terms of the future of Iraq itself and the U.S. presence there. The U.S. effort to impose one constitutes another destructive American mistake in that tragic country. It will likely be an expensive one in terms of cash and blood.

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. The whole spirit of the thing is vindictive toward the Sunni

It probably isn't the wisest move to disenfranchise a really hostile mistrusting segment of your population and offer them nothing for the future. bush thinks he can get away with this, perhaps he intends to start a large scale genocide, that looks to be the only way he is going to get what he wants.