August 30, 2005

The triumph of the Iraqi Constitution

By James Lewis
Surprise! The Washington Post is "disappointed" by the Constitution just drafted by the elected Iraqi Constitutional Assembly. The Arab League is tisk—tisking, but all its members are despotic criminocracies, so that doesn't mean a lot. And our friends the Europeans are skeptical, fresh from their own triumphant experiment in constitutional lawmaking. In fact, the Iraqi Constitution is a much more serious and democratic document than the EU Constitution, which was turned down with a massive sneer by the French voters just a few months ago. For one thing, it is clear and understandable to anybody with a high school education. It is about 25 pages long. The European Constitution was 400 pages, and its main author warned that it should not be send to the voters because they could not possibly understand it. Fortunately, you don't have to listen to the obsessive naysayers carping about Iraq's steady progress to democracy. Just read the draft Constitution yourself. To me, it is just...(Read Full Article)