Whenever critics of the war in Iraq say that Iraq is worse off than before the war, the administration points to the elections. But what has been the results of the elections in Iraq? And what was promised to get the Iraqis to the polls? Have any of those promises been kept? I heard this interview this morning on Morning Edition and even Steve Inskeep had to stop and say wait a minute, I don't think a lot of people understand this.
http://www.npr.org/...
Vali Nasr, the guy being interviewed, is author of "The Shia Revival: How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future", and a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School. His position is that despite elections and a government there is still a critical piece missing. A piece that was promised in the lead up to the Iraqi elections.
"What is the framework around which they should begin the negotiations? A year ago, we presented the idea of a national unity government and power-sharing around constitutional renegotiations. A year into the process, nothing has happened. It's clear that there is no framework for discussions. There is good intention -- everybody wants to discuss -- but nobody knows what... they, in practice, will be discussing."
He goes on to say:
"The Sunnis agreed to join the political process at the end of 2005 on the condition that the key provisions of the constitution would be renegotiated. None of that has actually happened. You have a political process in Iraq, but we haven't moved forward in the direction of realistic power-sharing that will make Iraq work."
Yeah, clearly not a lot of people understand this and the fact that the Iraqi Constitution has no validity with what, 30% of the population? But hey, we had elections.