Al-Jaafari Named to Head Iraq's New Gov't

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Shiite lawmakers Sunday chose Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari to head Iraq's new government, Shiite officials said.

Al-Jaafari won 64 votes, one more than Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi, officials said. There were two abstentions.

More than 100 lawmakers from the Shiite coalition, the United Iraqi Alliance, gathered to vote.

The choice of the umbrella Shiite alliance is assured of becoming prime minister because Shiites won the most parliament seats in the Dec. 15 national elections.

Shiite lawyers cast their votes at the heavily guarded home of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of Abdul-Mahdi's party. Al-Jaafari's supporters gathered in the compound cheered when word of the outcome emerged from the closed door meeting room.

Al-Jaafari, a physician, is a member of the Dawa Party and spent years in exile in Iran and Britain before returning to his homeland after the U.S.-led coalition ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

His government, which took office in April 2005, had been widely criticized for failing to improve the country's crumbling infrastructure or deal effectively with the Sunni-led insurgency.

To be sure, the rule of law (as opposed to rule by theocracy or nationalism) does not guarantee freedom; it is merely (or not so merely) a prerequisite for freedom. The key factors that then lead to freedom are: (a) the law is universal and equitable; (b) the law recognizes individual sovereignty; (c) the law is constructed by the people as a whole.

In other words, you have a compact between the society and the individual - i.e., government by the people's consent.

But getting back to Iraq, Wahhabism exerted trivial influence before the war, but has now been imported to some extent by the foreign infiltrators. Still, it is nowhere near the dominant creed of Sunni Iraqis. Baathist Iraq was a secular, socialist nation-state - in theory governed by the rule of law.

To be sure, what applies in general for, say, Iraqi Sunnis or Malay Sunnis does not then apply to, say, Saudi Sunnis or Palestinian Sunnis. It is not so much the Sunnism that I'm pointing to as the distinction but rather the unique history that's shaped the Iraqi Sunnis. The same goes for the Shiites. For instance, back when the Shah was in power, the Persian Shiites would've answered very differently than they would today.

But again back to Iraq, before the war the law was embodied in the person of Saddam Hussein. In order to go from that to a free state, you would 'merely' need to transfer that authority from the strongman to the constitution. It's a fitful process, but the basic principles are no different than the experience of many European nations.

However, for the Kurds and the Shiites the law has been rejected as the ultimate arbiter, for that very reason - because it was embodied by Saddam Hussein and the Baathist apparatus. In the course of their liberation struggles, what became paramount was the Kurdish nation (in the ethnic sense) and the Shiite religious leaders. Subsequently, their socio-political order is structured around those respective principles.

The typical sequence has been God -> Nation -> Law.

Good contemporary examples of each are Iran, Russia, and America.

Anyway, this is all just my way of thinking of things.

Although Hamas reveals linkage to Iran,
Its primarily Muslim Brotherhood with some tweaking.

Cairo was jolted by M.B.'s recent climb in elections.
Can Cairo risk to continue the process?

Syria and Algeria slaughtered M.B. to the tune of thousands and thousands,....they are that much of a threat to the rulers.

Mashaal of Hamas ran the Hamas usurp of Fatah from Damascus.
M.B's synergy is linked to Iran now and building queitly.
M.B. are not going the open reactionary route like they did in prior times which saw them get the chop.

Iraq is in evolution.
But so is the surrounding landscape of the mid east.

The war flags of Islam...the black and white flags of Al Harb are everywhere to be seen.

I'm sure the Saudi's see this and consider.
They are the Guardians of Mecca and Medina since they jacked them from the Hashemites.
How long can Saudi Arabia sit on the sidelines as the war flags snap in the breeze.
Will they be threatened soon to comply with Al Harb?

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