A Silver Lining in Iraq Among the bad news, reasons to hope
Cathy Young
We are often preoccupied with milestones and numbers, and the death of the 2,000th American soldier in the war in Iraq has been an occasion for much reflection. This particular milestone comes at a time when President Bush is already reeling from a number of political blows. At present, fewer than 40 percent of Americans approve of Bush's handling of the war—and 55 percent think we should not have gone to war against Saddam Hussein in the first place. The gloom is not surprising, considering that the main rationale originally given for the war—Iraq's weapons of mass destruction—has turned out to be a fiasco.
But what if the pessimists turn out to be wrong in the long run?
Amid the bad news, a piece of good news has been eclipsed. On October 25, the results of the Iraqi constitutional referendum were announced. The provisional constitution was approved by a 78 to 21 percent margin, though three provinces dominated by Sunni Arabs voted against it. (In one, the ''no" votes did not reach the two-thirds majority required to defeat the constitution.) United Nations observers confirmed that the outcome was untainted by fraud.
For the first time ever, an Arab country has adopted a democratic constitution by referendum. Despite the threat of terrorism, Iraqi men and women went to the polls in massive numbers: Turnout was about 63 percent. In December, parliamentary elections are to be held. This may not be democracy as we know it: The draft Iraqi constitution enshrines Islam as the state religion (though it also prohibits discrimination based on gender and religion), and the people tend to vote as the clerics tell them. But surely it is a positive step in a country long tyrannized by a bloody dictatorship.
Yet the dominant media narrative is that Iraqi self-government is doomed because the draft constitution favors Shi'ites and Kurds and fails to reflect the interests of the Sunni Arabs. There are dire warnings that the Sunnis' failure to block the constitution will convince them that the political process is stacked against them, driving them to embrace the insurgency. This theme was echoed by Senator John Kerry in a speech at Georgetown University last week: ''The constitution, opposed by more than two thirds of Sunnis, has postponed and even exacerbated the fundamental crisis of Iraq."
But there is a different view. In The Weekly Standard, military historian Frederick W. Kagan writes that a democratic solution in Iraq is possible only after the Sunni community has learned that it cannot achieve its goals by violence. Kagan notes that the Sunni Arabs, who constitute about 20 percent of the Iraqi population, have long enjoyed political dominance, and to the Sunni elites less than a position of power and privilege will likely seem a rotten deal. The New Republic, a liberal magazine, takes the same view.
(more)
http://www.reason.com/cy/cy110205.shtml 
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