Ayatollah al-Sistani's Wednesday comments are one more sign that the real conflict in Iraq -- not what is arguably the U.S. proxy war for the Shiite majority against the Sunnis, but an eventual struggle between the U.S. and the Shiite majority -- might still be around the corner.
But who can you sympathize with when you read al-Sistani's problems with the convoluted plan that we've cooked up to frame and ultimately define our 100+ billion dollar enterprise in Iraq. From Thursday's Washington Post:
Bremer's plan calls for caucuses in the country's 18 provinces to choose representatives to serve on a transitional assembly, which would form a provisional government. Participants in the caucuses must be approved by 11 of 15 people on an organizing committee, which will be selected by the Governing Council and U.S.-appointed councils at the city and province levels.
Hakim and other Shiite leaders, who worry that the organizing committees may exclude religious figures, want assembly members to be directly elected. At the very least, they are demanding that the organizing committees be disbanded and any qualified candidate be allowed to participate in the caucuses.
One of Sistani's main objections, Hakim said, "is the absence of any role for the Iraqi people in the transfer of power to Iraqis." Although U.S. officials have argued that holding elections would be too disruptive, time-consuming and complicated in the absence of an electoral law and accurate voter rolls, Hakim insisted elections for the transitional assembly would be possible in 80 percent of Iraq.
My two questions:
- Is it just me, or are folks learning the details of this plan just now: particularly the 11 of 15 people who will choose the people who get to choose the people who get to -- if I'm following this correctly -- choose the people who would provisionally govern Iraq. Doesn't this seem like a detail that should have gotten A LOT more media scrutiny? After all, "democratizing Iraq" is basically the only justification for the war that is still being touted by the Bush administration (remember "global democratic revolution"?)
- This brings me to the second question. Would it be too provocative a talking point to suggest the weird resonance between this truly bizarre notion of democracy and the unseemly way that Bush himself landed in the White House? For some reason the "11 of 15" that would pick the delegates reminds me of the "5 of 9" judges that ultimately picked the president (not to mention the invoking of "accurate voter's rolls" as the reason for this crazy plan). History always repeats itself: first as farce, than as tragedy.