April 22, 2003
Democracy in Iraq
Tim Dunlop mulls over Rumsfeld's views on Iraq's post war political structure and Jane Finch at The Daily Rant likes Tim's 'faith based initiative' line. In the comments to the latter post Nathan tells us:
From what I understand, we would like to establish a robust constitution with strong guarantees for civil rights. Democracy has demonstrated that it is an excellent vehicle for preserving such rights. Islamic govts have not, and tend to overthrow such guarantees as soon as possible.Jane responds:
For democracy to work, a party has to win power, lose power, and then be able to regain power again.
Nathan, how about the Iraqis establish their own constitution?Read more at The Daily Rant (link above).
Perhaps they can just copy Qatar's pending new constitution (which I discussed here a few days ago). It likely won't fit Nathan's expectations (which I tend to agree with) but it just might do for a faith based initiative. Posted by Steve on April 22, 2003
I'm with Nathan, too, on his working defintion of democracy, but Jane pretty much captures the point I was making: if we mean what we say about 'giving' them liberty, then the decision about what sort of government they want is theirs.
Posted by Tim at April 23, 2003 6:17 AMAgreed...self determination is the right way to go.
My fear is that the current US administration really does want to dictate the new gov't, both the constitutional docs and the who, neither of which would bode well for the future. I suspect the US admin likes the Qatar doc I referred to and it is riddled with enough holes to make anyone who believes that the main role of gov't is to protect our right to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' cringe.
Posted by Steve at April 23, 2003 8:47 AM
