What is the right of the Coalition to strongly recommend (same as force through, but it sounds bettr) a new Iraqi constitution? Let's crack open a history book here. How did Japan obtain its democratic constitution that forbids an offensive military capacity? Why they got it because the Allies won the war, and General Douglas MacArthur pushed it through.
All of this stuff is self-evident to anyone who knows how constitutions are created and maintained, and who has read the histories of post-war Germany and Japan. Plus, of course, the history of the Swiss who have gone 500 years without participating in a major war. Not a bad record at all when one considers the divisiveness of its populations, traditions, cultures and languages.
Congressman Billybob
A cantonal "solution" has also been proposed for Israel and Palestine but it's unlikely to work or even to be tried out. It was also suggested for Yugoslavia and got nowhere. Nationalisms were too strong. Apparently the Muslim-Croat Bosnian Federation is composed of cantons. But it's not something that could have prevented the wars there. The cantons were created afterwards, after Serbs, Muslims and Croats struggled to displace each other. If the system works now, it's because Muslims and Croats hang together because of the conflicts both have with the Serbs.
The thing is, the cantons are supposed to give various ethno-religious groups in a a society a chance to govern themselves, but the canton boundaries can't correspond to those ethno-religious groups because then there wouldn't be much to hold them together (and it's always hard to draw exact boundaries between different groups anyway). You have to have enough concord and harmony to begin with to get the system to work. Shi'ites and Sunni and Kurds have to be willing to live allow some of their brethern to be governed by other groups, and if you don't have that good will at the beginning, the cantonal system won't create it -- and won't work.
Switzerland has a reputation as a libertarian paradise, and it's not undeserved. But we forget that they had their own civil war. It was "brief and almost bloodless," but the Protestant cantons were able to dictate terms to the Catholics. If the two sides were more evenly matched, though, results could have been much worse.
Switzerland is certainly a fortunate country compared to many others, but their system isn't a cure-all for political ills. Federalism is better than unitary systems but if the political wisdom, maturity and responsibility aren't there, the constitutional system won't create them.