Posted on 10/15/2005 4:13:51 AM PDT by billorites
The agreement on constitutional amendment procedures between leading Sunni politicians and their counterparts in Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish communities is the most hopeful news from that distressed country in a long time. This is true no matter whether voters approve the constitution in today's balloting, as expected, or reject it.
The deal to convene a committee to propose amendments next year, assuming that the constitution is ratified, gives the Sunnis nothing concrete, only a chance to propose changes in a document many of them instinctively rejected when it was proposed. Why did they reject it? Mostly because Sunnis by and large did not vote in the elections for the National Assembly that drafted the proposed constitution.
That decision to abstain seems to have taught a painful but essential lesson in how democracy works: You don't necessarily get what you want; all you get is a chance. The energetic voter registration in Sunni areas for today's balloting was an early tipoff that the Sunni chieftains had learned the lesson.
Even though 19 small parties immediately refused to join the big Sunni parties and groups, the last-minute understanding with Shiites and Kurds will substantially increase the legitimacy of today's results.
This isn't all the good news from Iraq. An intercepted letter from Osama bin Laden's top deputy, Ayman Zawahiri, to the top insurgent in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi provides convincing evidence that violent attacks on Shiites are alienating much Iraqi opinion. ``Many of your Muslim admirers amongst the common folk are wondering about your attacks'' on ordinary Shiites, and about beheadings of captives, according to the text on the Web site of the director of National Intelligence.
For the blame-America crowd, Zawahiri provides a wakeup: It is not the American presence that should motivate the insurgency, but rather the desire to establish a fundamentalist Islamic rule in Iraq and beyond. Zarqawi is cautioned that his fighters and terrorists ``must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq their ongoing mission is to establish an Islamic state.''
The writer added, ``More than half of this battle is taking place in the battlefield of the media.''
All this is evidence that the mighty effort Americans are making in Iraq, stumbling though it has been at times, is worth the agony.
Kind of late to the party Boston, but welcome aboard.
The Herald has a pretty conservative editorial page. It is NOT the Boston Globe.
Yes, we haven't seen too many stories like this in the MSM and no doubt we won't see many more, unless the election can be painted as a debacle and a Bush failure.
The MSM learned their lesson well after they were caught off guard by the success of the initial Iraqi referendum about a year ago accompanied by pictures of Iraqi women waving their "blue thumbs" to the cameras.
That MSM slip up got by their tight, "good news embargo" before they could react to downplay it's importance. They are determined not to repeat that mistake again and so this time you will see a general disregard of the election or, if there's violence initiated by the terrorists, that angle will be played up as being all Bush's fault.
Congressman Billybob
Latest column: "Media Forget History of American Constitution When Reporting on Iraq's"
"Kind of late to the party Boston, but welcome aboard."
Some of us have been here all along. Party on dudes.
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