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EDITORIAL

August 18, 2005

Pakistan - Home Page (English)

By failing to meet the August 15 deadline for producing a draft constitution, Iraqi lawmakers have demonstrated their unwillingness to find mutual accommodation and compromise. With this attitude they have driven the Americans into a tight corner, who are now desperately clutching at straws to save the Iraqi enterprise and their irreparably damaged image.

For some inexplicable reason, the Americans permitted themselves to believe that after elections, the seating of a new government and the framing of a new constitution, the insurgency would weaken if not completely erode. And they thought that this would provide them an opening to extricate themselves from an enterprise that has become an albatross around their necks.

'Iraq ... Everyday', Alhayat Aljadeeda, Palestine

But will Iraq’s lawmakers produce the requisite document within the now extended period of seven days? Given the critical constitutional issues about which none of the partisans seem willing to relent, that is a big question. And even if some of them do relent, will this fit into the scheme now envisaged by the Americans and provide an outlet for Washington to crawl out of Iraq?

Only time will tell, but the prospects look dim. Indeed, President Bush and his hawks must be ruing the day they allowed themselves to be taken for a ride by their favorite Iraqi exiles. When they did, they let slip a golden opportunity to achieve their true objective without getting stuck in the quagmire they presently find themselves: Iraqi regime change.

As they were flexing their muscles to take over Iraq, Saddam’s intelligence people contacted their American counterparts, offering on his behalf not only intrusive inspections by U.S. weapons experts but also democratization and elections in which Saddam would not participate, even offering to go into exile.

But the Bush White House derisively spurned his offer, which could have spared the Iraqi people their travails and the Americans the severe buffeting of their image and credibility.

In fact, blinded by their mad passion to topple Saddam, Bush and his warmongers failed to reckon with some compelling realities, none of which were brought to their attention by their intelligence agencies, whose incompetence is now an established fact.

For one, they failed to grasp that the Iraqi exiles with support back home were not those sitting in Washington’s lap, but those holed up in Iran, thriving on Tehran’s munificence both in terms of hospitality and funding for their militias. They now dominate the existing Iraqi dispensation.

Now, as if Shiite ties to Iran weren’t enough to concern the U.S., they have really given the Americans a jolt by seeking autonomy for the Shiite-dominated south, just as the Kurds are demanding for their northern bastion.

The Americans may not be quite so averse to Kurdish autonomy, when having the Kurds hanker for an independent Kurdistan allows them a handle to nag Turkey, Syria and Iran. But autonomy for Iraqi Shias is a whole new ball game, given the state of America’s relationship with Iran.

Already, Americans are alleging that Iran is smuggling arms into Iraq. But it is for the Iraqis to decide whether to become a sovereign people or puppets. United, they will be giants; divided, they will be dwarfs.

VIDEO FROM THE MUSLIM WORLD: IRANIAN STUDENTS FORM HUMAN CHAIN AROUND REACTOR

Human Chain Around Nuclear Facilites

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