A Tale of Two Constitutional Conventions: Iraq's and Ours by Paul Douglas Newman
The differences between Iraq's and the U.S. constitutional processes (and many, many more exist) far outweigh the similarities, and it is the differences gleaned from history that provide us a glimpse into Iraq's future. Neoconservative pundits like David Brooks from the New York Times, who like to excuse Iraq's constitutional troubles by citing similarities to the U.S. experience, state that constitution-making is hard, and that even the U.S. descended into civil war over the principal issue of states' rights versus federal power, and besides, that was four score and seven years later. This should not comfort us. In the U.S., there were local movements (and one war in Massachusetts) against state governments in the year before the Philadelphia Convention. But in Iraq, civil war is not decades in the future.
- posted by SARTRE @ 7:41 AM