- Jun 6, 2007
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What is politically going on in Iraq with a unifying politician selected as the Prime Minister designee is a positive development but it in no way solves the fundamental critical problem in Iraq. The fundamental critical problem is that Iraq's constitution needs to be changed to insure only unity candidates receive parliamentary approval to be Prime Minister. Unless the Iraqi people do this they are not learning the lesson from the disastrous Nouri al Maliki Prime Ministership tenure. It is so heartbreaking that there is no real public discussions in Iraq and throughout the world about the absolute need for Iraq to change its constitution to solve this problem. The unraveling of Iraq that the world has seen over the last nine months will absolutely, definitely there is not a sliver of doubt will happen again unless the Iraqis change their constitution to fix this problem the only question is when it will happen! This apparent momentary political fix of Mr. Abadi candidacy for the Prime Ministership is almost worthless when one considers that Iraq's long-term political and security stability is in no way insured, secured or something which can be counted on. At minimum Iraq needs to change its constitution to require that for a candidate for the Prime Ministership along with his slate of cabinet members to get Iraq's parliament approval so they are installed in those jobs at minimum a significant number of Sunni and a significant number of Kurdish Iraqi parliament members, like twenty-percent of members from the respective sect, must vote in favor of the candidate and his slate. Further, the constitution needs to be changed to make arrangement when such a unifying candidate cannot be found after trying for a good amount of time, do what other Parliaments do have caretaker governments do two-year stint until the next parliamentary elections one caretaker Prime Minister be a candidate that gets the most votes amongst all Parlimentary members and the other caretaker Prime Minister be a candidate that gets the most votes amongst only the Sunni and Kurdish Parliamentary members. Of non-critical importance but would definitely be better for the Iraqi people, to address the Maliki problem and a potential dictatorship problem, is change the Iraq constitution to limit a single person to two terms as Prime Minister of Iraq. Another definitely would be better for the Iraqi people it would address the problem of Iraq's army and police force becoming sectarian is change Iraq's constitution to limit the tenure of the head of the Iraqi army and the head of the Iraqi police to four year terms and mandate that after every four years the person installed in those jobs has to be of a different sect than the person that held the job over the prior four years.
This need for the Iraqi people to change their constitution to avoid having a Prime Minister who is outrageously discriminatory and can destabilize the country is of "monumental" importance the American government needs to partner with other countries throughout the world and lobby Iraq's political leaders to make this constitutional fix. They need to tell Iraq's political leadership that Iraq's constitutional system which does not guarantee an Iraqi government that is not sectarian is not only super bad for the Iraqi people but it is super bad for the world. This current disintegration of the country of Iraq causing this rise of this Islamic extremist group the Islamic State has created a modern episode of crimes against humanity that will go down in history what has and is taking place in northern Iraq will be remembered like the crimes at Srebrenica Bosnia where 8000 Muslim men were massacred and the crimes of Darfur Sudan where thousands of Black Sudanese were massacred. What is going on there with the Islamic States killing people because they won't convert to Islam and capturing 300 Yazidis women to be held for ransom or sold as slaves or be kept as war wives is barbaric it is something out of the Middle Ages. It is a byproduct of Islamic extremism and can happen again if Iraq becomes a Shiite sectarian government that drives Sunni Iraqis to the extreme.
Iraqi leaders need to recognize the dangerous tenuous nature of their constitutional system for selecting a Prime Minister.
They need to consider all the hoops they had to jump through to replace the sectarian Maliki with the hopefully unifying Abadi and ask themselves don't we want to have a more stable system for our people. You had to select a candidate that both the Sunni and Kurdish parliamentary blocs support along with and this is a big deal the National alliance, the alliance of Shia political parties, support; you had to have the political Iraqi supreme court stay out of the process, you had to have the current prime minister not abusively use his power like arrest and charge with crimes political opponents or use the military to take over the government, you had to have Iraq's Shia Clerical leadership repeatedly call for a unifying candidate and you had to have Iran not interfere in the whole process. Can Iraq's political leaders really count on these stars amazingly lining up like this every four years. Wisdom says no any knowledgeable person knows there is a huge struggle going on in the Islamic religion between the Shia and Sunni with Iran leading the Shia side and they almost certainly are going to want to be in control of the Iraqi government so they are going to be using their huge power to install a sectarian candidate as prime minister, so the Iraqi people better have constitutional protections in place to counter this.
The United States and their partners like the United Kingdom and France should go to the Iraqi political leaders and say if you change your constitution to make you country politically stable as outlined we will help you by offering the full force of our air power to rid Iraq of the evil organization the Islamic State. If these countries throw their full weight behind this effort they can do to the Islamic state force what they did to the Gadhafi forces in Libya, it will be a turkey shoot by the end of one year the locals will be able to chase the remnants of IS forces out of Iraq.
This need for the Iraqi people to change their constitution to avoid having a Prime Minister who is outrageously discriminatory and can destabilize the country is of "monumental" importance the American government needs to partner with other countries throughout the world and lobby Iraq's political leaders to make this constitutional fix. They need to tell Iraq's political leadership that Iraq's constitutional system which does not guarantee an Iraqi government that is not sectarian is not only super bad for the Iraqi people but it is super bad for the world. This current disintegration of the country of Iraq causing this rise of this Islamic extremist group the Islamic State has created a modern episode of crimes against humanity that will go down in history what has and is taking place in northern Iraq will be remembered like the crimes at Srebrenica Bosnia where 8000 Muslim men were massacred and the crimes of Darfur Sudan where thousands of Black Sudanese were massacred. What is going on there with the Islamic States killing people because they won't convert to Islam and capturing 300 Yazidis women to be held for ransom or sold as slaves or be kept as war wives is barbaric it is something out of the Middle Ages. It is a byproduct of Islamic extremism and can happen again if Iraq becomes a Shiite sectarian government that drives Sunni Iraqis to the extreme.
Iraqi leaders need to recognize the dangerous tenuous nature of their constitutional system for selecting a Prime Minister.
They need to consider all the hoops they had to jump through to replace the sectarian Maliki with the hopefully unifying Abadi and ask themselves don't we want to have a more stable system for our people. You had to select a candidate that both the Sunni and Kurdish parliamentary blocs support along with and this is a big deal the National alliance, the alliance of Shia political parties, support; you had to have the political Iraqi supreme court stay out of the process, you had to have the current prime minister not abusively use his power like arrest and charge with crimes political opponents or use the military to take over the government, you had to have Iraq's Shia Clerical leadership repeatedly call for a unifying candidate and you had to have Iran not interfere in the whole process. Can Iraq's political leaders really count on these stars amazingly lining up like this every four years. Wisdom says no any knowledgeable person knows there is a huge struggle going on in the Islamic religion between the Shia and Sunni with Iran leading the Shia side and they almost certainly are going to want to be in control of the Iraqi government so they are going to be using their huge power to install a sectarian candidate as prime minister, so the Iraqi people better have constitutional protections in place to counter this.
The United States and their partners like the United Kingdom and France should go to the Iraqi political leaders and say if you change your constitution to make you country politically stable as outlined we will help you by offering the full force of our air power to rid Iraq of the evil organization the Islamic State. If these countries throw their full weight behind this effort they can do to the Islamic state force what they did to the Gadhafi forces in Libya, it will be a turkey shoot by the end of one year the locals will be able to chase the remnants of IS forces out of Iraq.
