Iran, Orwell & The Enigma Of Greenwald

I generally never click over to read Glen Greenwald unless I spot a particularly interesting title or teaser, such as the one in Memorandum today listing a Glen Greenwald article, "George Orwell On The Evil Iranian Menace."  Greenwald relying on Orwell struck me as odd, as Orwell was a pretty severe critic of the type of politics Greenwald embraces.

Here was the quote that Greenwald uses from Orwell's 1945 Notes on Nationalism as the basis for his column.

All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by ‘our’ side. . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

(emphasis supplied by Greenwald).

Greenwald neglects to inform us that Orwell gave in his essay a unique definition of nationalism, conflating it with xenophoia to define "nationalism" as "identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests." And according to Greenwald, all of those in the U.S. who see Iran as a great evil meet Orwell's definition of "nationalists" as, according to Greenwald, we are actually more "evil" in our actions then is Iran.

To make his point, Greenwald goes through a long list of American and Israeli actions that he considers criminal, ranging from waterboarding (Torture!!!!!!) and military detentions to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and including that:

. . . some combination of the U.S. and Israel has bombarded Iran with multiple acts of war over the last year, including explosions on Iranian soil, the murder of numerous Iranian nuclear scientists (in which even one of their wives was shot), and sophisticated cyberattacks.

Greenwald sees no possible justification for such acts, concluding with this utterly unreal statement:

During this same time period, Iran has not invaded, occupied or air attacked anyone. Iran, to be sure, is domestically oppressive, but no more so — and in many cases less — than the multiple regimes funded, armed and otherwise propped up by the U.S. during this period. Those are all just facts.

Facts?  That is so disingenous, so blatantly misleading in its omissions as to be risible.   Here is a short list I compiled some time ago of Iran's bloodthirsty, dangerous and aggressive acts:

Iran is the single most destabilizing influence in the world today. Sec of Defense Robert Gates had it right when he said not too long ago

Everywhere you turn, it is the policy of Iran to foment instability and chaos, no matter the strategic value or cost in the blood of innocents - Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. . . . There can be little doubt that their destabilizing foreign policies are a threat to the interests of the United States, to the interests of every country in the Middle East, and to the interests of all countries within the range of the ballistic missiles Iran is developing.

And, as Stuart Levy, Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence recently testified before Congress, Iran is the "the central banker of terrorism." It "uses its global financial ties and its state-owned banks to pursue its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, and to fund terrorism."

To tick off the list of Iran’s threats:

- Iran is clearly doing all it can to prevent peace between Palestinians and Israel. And in rearming Hamas, it is doing so with substantially stronger rockets that can reach further into Israel, virtually insuring that Israel will have to take extreme measures to stop the daily attacks.

- Iran’s meddling in Lebanon has created a situation where both the Shia population and the country as a whole are dominated by Hezbollah, an army trained, armed and directed by Iran. Indeed, Hezbollah is now demanding veto power over acts of the Lebanese government. In the wake of the 2006 war with Israel, Iran is arming Hezbollah with much stronger rockets that can reach vitrutally all of Israel, thus insuring that the next war with Hezbollah will also be far more bloody for all of Lebanon.

- Iran has occupied several islands belonging to the UAE. Iran has supported attempted coups in Bahrain and, recently, Azerbaijan. Iran occupied a significant part of Iraqi territory immediately after Saddam's fall – some 1800 square-kilometers of the Zaynalkosh salient - and is making an effort to extend its dominance over the waterway on which sits Iraq's only major port.

- Iran is arming and training the Sudan's military - those would be the folks involved in a campaign of genocide against the non-Muslims in Southern Sudan and Darfur.

- Iran is now the single greatest threat to stability in Iraq. Iran is attempting to "Lebanize" Iraq, using "special groups" culled from Sadr’s Mahdi Army to create a Hezbollah type of militia that will keep Iraq’s central government weak and extend Iranian influence over Iraq’s Shia majority. Indeed, Iran’s campaign to create a satellite state of Iraq was clear from the very start of the U.S. invasion in March, 2003. Their "special groups" are responsible for the deaths of nearly 200 American soldiers and the wounding and maiming of hundreds of others.

- Iran’s drive towards a nuclear weapon is significantly destabilizing the Middle East and has already initiated what promises to be a nightmare of nuclear proliferation. "Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, the UAE, Yemen, Morocco, Libya, Jordan and Egypt have indicated an interest in developing nuclear programs, with Israeli officials saying that if these countries did not want the programs now for nuclear capabilities, they wanted the technology in place to keep "other options open" if Iran developed a bomb." According to a recent study initiated by Senator Lugar, "the future Middle East landscape may include a number of nuclear-armed or nuclear weapons-capable states vying for influence in a notoriously unstable region."

- And then of course is the threat that a nuclear armed Iran intrinsically poses. According to Bernard Lewis, the West’s premier Orientalist, Iran's theocracy operates outside the constraints of Western logic. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MADD) that worked against the Soviet Union and with other nuclear armed nations is not assured of working with a theocracy whose messianic rulers welcome the carnage that will presage the coming of the hidden Imam. And to add to that is the threat that Iran could well provide nuclear materials to terrorist groups in order to conduct attacks, such as dirty bombs, that could not necessarily be traced back to Iran. Such a scenario would be completely in keeping with the historical activities of Iran's theocracy.

And indeed, even the paltry number of "facts" that Greenwald posits are false. Greenwald's suggestion that Iran is staying within its borders is not merely objectively false, but it ignores the whole raison d'etre of Iran's theocracy - as even the smallest amount of research would show:

Iran's theocracy exists to spread its Khomeinist revolution at all costs throughout the Middle East and the world. This is no secret. Iran’s leaders since Khomeini have regularly and explicitly stated as such. For example, this from the Ayatollah Khomeini, quoted in an 11th-grade Iranian schoolbook:

I am decisively announcing to the whole world that if the world-devourers [i.e., the infidel powers of the U.S. and the West] wish to stand against our religion, we will stand against their whole world and will not cease until the annihilation of all them. Either we all become free, or we will go to the greater freedom which is martyrdom. Either we shake one another's hands in joy at the victory of Islam in the world, or all of us will turn to eternal life and martyrdom. In both cases, victory and success are ours.

Read the entire article. And there has been no weakening of this expansionist motivation in the years since. Indeed, the sub-cult of Shia’ism dominant in Iran’s rulers today, Mahdism, is equally as expansionist while actually being more messianic and dangerous than the philosophy articulated by Khomeini. It is a philosophy that welcomes carnage and chaos to hasten the coming of the Mahdi. This from Ahmedinejad, himself a Mahdist, in a February address to Iran’sAssembly of Experts:

Building a model society and introducing the Islamic Revolution are our nation's missions… The Islamic Revolution and the Islamic Republic of Iran are both great divine gifts, not only awarded to the Iranian nation, but to the entire mankind. . . . "Our nation's second important mission [after insuring a Khomeinist utopia in Iran] is introducing the Islamic Revolution to the entire mankind. . . .

Equally risible is Greenwald's claim that Iran's domestic oppression is not particularly harsh or unique.  Did this joker miss the brutal repression of the Green Revolution.  Does he not understand that, even before that repression, the theocracy made extensive use of terrorism to keep its own population in line?  As two human right’s activists wrote in PJM some time ago:

. . . [S]ince 1979 the Mullahs of Iran have killed upwards of one million Iranians, not to mention the nearly one million sacrificed to the 8-year-long Iran/Iraq war. And what the Iranian people have withstood in terms of outrageous human rights violations is shocking; public hangings, stoning, flogging, cutting off limbs, tongues and plucking out eyeballs are an everyday occurrence across Iran. All are meant to strike fear of the ruling Mullahs into people’s hearts.

Read the entire article.  It is hard for me to think of a more evil regime than Iran's theocracy, nor one more threatening to literally the entire world should they gain a nuclear arsenal.

So let's address the enigma that is Greenwald.  He apparently is intelligent enough to write coherent essays.  His professional life involves political commentary and analysis, so we can reasonably assume that he is not so lacking in intelligence that he is incapable of doing rudimentary research.  So we can only conclude that Greenwald is being deliberately intellectually dishonest in the above essay in order to attack his own country.

Indeed, had Greenwald read Orwell's 1945 Notes on Nationalism with a closer eye, he might have seen his own reflection in the form of "negative nationalism."  According to Orwell,  negative nationalists are those who apply xenephobic nationalism in reverse, to see only the worst in their own country in comparison to all others.  Indeed, it would seem that is a disease that fully infects virtually all of our modern left.  That explains the enigma of how Greenwald can pen such a disgusting piece of intellectual dishonesty, but it still doesn't explain the enigma of how and why he gets paid for it.

Update:  Welcome Larwyn's Linx readers

Read More...

Summary only...

Fjordman On The Descent Of Britain & Europe Towards Muslim Domnation

The brilliant essayist Fjordman writes on the decline of Britain as the Labour government encourages ever more Muslim immigration and ruthlessly imposes its brand of multiculturalism on the indigenous population, elevating the values of radical Islam over British values. It is suicide, socialist style.
_______________________________________________________

You'll note in the post here I quote Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum For Democracy (AIFD). During a recent debate with a Salafi cleric, Dr. Jasser spoke on the necessity of engaging Salafi / Wahhabi / Deobandi and Khomeinist in an ideological struggle. The Koranic interpretations and dogma of these specific sects need to be challenged if they are ever to become compatible with Western values and freedoms. Indeed, it is, quite literally, an existential struggle for the soul of Islam. There is some movement towards joining such a battle in America. Europe is pretending that no problem exists. When events erupt that force EU nations to act, they often do so ineffectively or, worse, with acts that are counterproductive - such as recent acts by UK's Home Office.

The EU has thrown its doors wide to Muslims for any number of reasons - some political, some economic, some incomprehensible - without any consideration for the fact that a high percentage of such Muslims not only have a belief system wholly incompatible with Western values, but that a significant minority wish to replace Western values with their own belief system. This is particularly true for the Wahhabi / Salafi Islamists and a significant number of Deobandi Islamists. Add to this the Marxist mindset of an intelligentsia throughout the EU that views their own value system as fundamentally flawed and you have the utterly insane problems that are playing out throughout Europe today. EU nations are not promoting their values or integration. To the contrary, they are encouraging Muslims to retain their own values under the banner of multiculturalism and then ruthlessly enforcing this system against any of the indigenous population that complains. Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant in Canada and Lionheart in Britain are some of the most notable recent examples of people crushed by a socialist system unwilling to allow any dissent from their suicidal path.

This from Fjordman on the above issues:

I will defend all Western and indeed infidel countries against Islamic Jihad, but I admit I feel especially close to Britain, not just because of the long cultural and historic ties between Scandinavia and the British Isles, but also because I appreciate the good that has come out of British culture. It makes me all the more sad to see how humiliated this great nation is today, and how many natives feel forced to leave what once was their country.

In May 2008, 18 year-old Ben Smith was stopped in a routine check. The police officer noticed an English flag on the parcel shelf and ordered him to remove it because it was "racist towards immigrants." One of the first things foreign powers usually do when they invade a country is to ban its national symbols. The fact that you can no longer run your flag in parts of Britain – and the Netherlands, Sweden, France, etc. – shows that the country is de facto under occupation, not just by Muslims, but by Multiculturalists and Globalists of all kinds.

In an essay entitled Put away the flags, Howard Zinn, the Leftist author of the best-selling book A People's History of the United States, writes that "On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism – that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder – one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?" He concludes that "We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation."

The problem is, rights can only be protected by sovereign states upholding their territorial integrity. How is "the global community" or "the human race" going to protect Mr. Zinn's liberties? For a free society to function, the state has to pass laws in the best interest of its citizenry and enforce these within its territory. Otherwise, self-government is impossible. In order to defend this territory from outside aggression, people need to identify with it as something more than just a random space on a map. By removing sovereign states, you remove the very foundations of a free society. Maybe some groups actually desire this?

The British Foreign Minister Milliband stated late in 2007 that the European Union should expand to include Muslim nations in North Africa and the Middle East. The French President Sarkozy and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel confirmed this early in 2008. Since the EU involves the free movement of people across borders, European leaders are thus opening the floodgates to tens of millions of Muslims at a time when native Europeans already feel like aliens in their own cities. It's the greatest betrayal in the history of Western civilization and it has been planned for many years, as those who have read Bat Ye'or's writings about Eurabia will know.

I believe native Europeans should seriously consider creating a European Indigenous People's Movement to protect our interests. Our authorities currently reward those who use violence and punish those who don't. Native Europeans are ignored if we protest peacefully against mass immigration or the expanding pan-European superstate. Muslims get concessions while we are treated with increasing hostility from those who are supposed to be our leaders.

Muslims in Jordan, a country that takes part in the Barcelona process of "Euro-Mediterranean cooperation" and thus a likely future EU member, recently sued the Danish cartoonists who drew Muhammad for "blasphemy" against Islam, a "crime" that potentially carries the death penalty according to sharia law. Not too many years into the future, we could face a situation where citizens of, say, Denmark could be arrested by their own authorities and handed over to be tried for "crimes against Islam" in one of the Arab "partner countries" of the EU. If this sounds unthinkable to you, look at the case of the Dutch cartoonist who was recently arrested by a dozen police officers for the crime of publishing cartoons insulting immigrants.

PM Tony Blair expressed "profound relief" over the end of a hostage crisis in 2007 where British soldiers had been kidnapped by the Islamic Republic of Iran, telling the mullahs that "we bear you no ill will." Blair will be remembered as one of the worst leaders in history. Even Chamberlain didn't flood his country with enemies and present this as something positive. Mass immigration has been going on for decades but showed a spectacular increase under Blair's and Brown's Labour regime. The spike was so powerful that it is tempting to speculate whether the authorities had deliberately set out to dismantle their own nation.

According to newspaper columnist Leo McKinstry, the English are being turned into second-class citizens in their own country: "England is in the middle of a profoundly disturbing social experiment. For the first time in a mature democracy, a Government is waging a campaign of aggressive discrimination against its indigenous population."

Similar things are happening all over the Western world, not just in England or Britain, but Britain is definitely one of the worst countries, yes. I've been debating with people which country is most likely to get the first Eurabian civil war triggered by mass immigration. There are several possible candidates, but my money is on Britain, because the anger among ordinary citizens is only rivaled by the brutal political repression tactics.

In a survey published in April 2008, one in three medical doctors in Britain said that elderly patients should not be given free treatment if it were unlikely to do them good for long. At the same time, Muslim men with multiple wives have been given the go-ahead to claim extra welfare benefits. The "welfare state" now means that the natives should watch grandma die because she's getting old anyway and we need the money to pay Muslims with multiple wives and numerous children so that they can feel comfortable while colonizing the country.

Also in April 2008, David T, a stunned dad and his little boy, were banned from swimming at a popular public sports center in east London because this was a "Muslim men-only swimming" session. Several Christian priests have been physically attacked by Muslims in east London, leading one bishop to worry about "no-go-zones" for Christian in some parts of the country. In early June, a Muslim police community support officer ordered Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham. They were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. In March 2008, two Islamic terrorists were moved to different prisons after complaining that their fellow inmates were "too white." Dhiren Barot had masterminded a radioactive bomb plot involving limousines packed with nails and explosives and Omar Khyam plotted to blow up the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent.

How do native Brits react to this? Well, some get angry, as they should. Bryan Cork, 49, was jailed for six months for "racist slurs" after he had shouted insults at Muslim worshippers outside a Cumbria mosque, including "proud to be British" and "go back to where you came from." This was after the London Jihadist bombings in 2005. Judge Paul Batty told him that racism in any form would not be tolerated. I hear much talk about "national suicide" these days, but Mr. Cork apparently had no desire to commit national suicide, he was held down by his own authorities for refusing to accept the organized destruction of his nation. What we are dealing with here isn't suicide; it's an execution of an entire nation, perhaps an entire civilization, the greatest civilization ever created by man.

Even children face this kind of ideological intimidation. Codie Stott, a teenage British schoolgirl, was forced to spend hours in a police cell after she was reported by her teachers for "racism." She had objected, in the mildest possible terms, to being placed during class with a group of South Asian immigrants who talked among themselves in a language she didn't understand. For this, she was dragged to the local police station and had her fingerprints and photograph taken. 18-year-old Jamie who has Down's syndrome and the mental age of a five-year-old was charged with "racism" after an argument with an immigrant. Meanwhile, the UK is being brought to its knees in an epidemic of violent crime and white native girls get raped by immigrants in spectacular numbers, just like all over Western Europe.

Why do people still take this lying down? I wonder about that sometimes. Maybe they feel that their votes don't matter and have resigned into a state of quiet apathy. Since many are dependent upon government support and being branded a "bigot" could cause you to lose your livelihood, people still have too much to lose by openly opposing these policies. Such subtle blackmail can be quite effective in suppressing dissent. This could, however, change rapidly in the event of a serious economic downturn. Another crucial element is confusion. People are deliberately kept in the dark by the media and the authorities regarding the full scale of what they are facing. Combined with Muslim violence and intimidation of critics, we have a climate of fear and confusion. People who are scared and confused can be easily controlled.

I've recently been re-reading the books of American evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond, especially Guns, Germs, and Steel. He has some points, but his most important flaw is his complete failure to explain how the Greater Middle East went from being a global center of civilization, which it was in ancient times, to being a global center of anti-civilization. This was not caused by smallpox or because zebras are more difficult to domesticate than water buffaloes. It was caused by Islam. Diamond, with his emphasis on historical materialism, fails to explain the rise of the West and especially why English, not Arabic, Chinese or Mayan, became the global lingua franca. What's so special about those rainy and foggy islands?

As Australian author Keith Windschuttle told a New Zealand audience, "The concepts of free enquiry and free expression and the right to criticise entrenched beliefs are things we take so much for granted they are almost part of the air we breathe. We need to recognise them as distinctly Western phenomena." He warns that the survival of this great achievement now depends entirely "on whether we have the intelligence to understand their true value and the will to face down their enemies."

No other civilization on earth ever created an equivalent of the European university system. One of the most important reasons why Europe surpassed China during the early modern age is more political freedom and free speech. The reason why English became the dominant language is because Britain and its offspring enjoyed great political liberty even by Western standards, and a corresponding economic dynamism.

Probably no empire in world history has been more benevolent than the British Empire, yet a report from February 2008 recommended that patriotism should be avoided in school lessons because British history is "morally ambiguous." I suppose Islamic history isn't, with almost 1400 years of brutal Jihad warfare on several continents?

I'm sure the British are being told that the ongoing mass immigration is a result of their "colonial history." I live in a country with no colonial history, yet we are still subject to mass immigration. We are also being told that we should allow Pakistani or Nigerian flags to celebrate our Constitution Day because this will be "good for integration." This has nothing to do with colonialism. So what does it have to do with? Well, I'm starting to wonder whether it has something to do with the Western love affair with free speech and political liberty. Those who desire a world where society is regulated and everybody does what the authorities tell them to do fear this Western preference for political self-determination.

If we look at the West during the past thousand years, we have generally enjoyed an unusually high degree of freedom and power sharing. This has been the case more in some periods and countries than in others, but in the big scheme of things this remains true. However, although this arrangement has been good for our civilization as a whole, some of our elites apparently are jealous of the more authoritarian system in other cultures. They want to turn the West into a "normal," meaning more corrupt and less free, civilization, aided by the forces of globalization. We are witnessing rising nepotism, and perhaps those at the top desire this.

The political elites no longer believe in stupid things such as borders, cultures and national sovereignty. Islam upsets their world-view, so they ignore it and move on with their project of globalization, anyway. The most hardcore Leftists actively side with Islam because its hatred of the West and its concept of a global umma coincide with their own globalist outlook. Yes, I know that Socrates stated "I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world," but I don't think he meant it quite as literally as Western elites do now. Socrates didn't have an entire village of Muslims transplanted to his street during the space of a single generation, and he didn't have his daughters or female relatives raped by Muslims in his own country.

Our traditional freedoms were the result of a specific culture, developed over centuries of hard struggles. Maybe other cultures have to go through similar struggles of their own to achieve this, and some will perhaps never be able to do so. We should protect our freedoms at home before we try to export them, and we should protect them by preserving the European-derived culture which created them.

Our enemies, internal and external, want to destroy the Western world because we represent liberty, and they want to destroy Britain in particular because it gave birth to the most powerful pro-liberty culture within the Western tradition. I hope the British can regain their strength and throw off their traitor class, but they need to do so soon. We cannot allow the greatest nation in human history to be destroyed by the planet's most barbaric cultures. The British people, like their Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish and Danish counterparts, have every right to desire self-determination and self-preservation, and limit or even completely halt immigration as they see fit to ensure this. Those who say otherwise are evil, and need to be exposed as such. The Western world is under attack by a global Islamic Jihad. To support continued mass immigration of Muslims in this situation should be regarded as high treason, and punished as such.

(H/T Europe News)

Read More...

Summary only...

The Iraqi Parliament

Iraq's internal politics are at the center of the debate now in Washington about how to proceed in Iraq - i.e., whether to abandon Iraq or whether to stay and continue the process towards democracy and stabilization. Long War Journal has an exceptional series of articles on the inner workings of Iraqi politics, efforts to build a functioning bureaucracy, and the challenges to provide service. LWJ's most recent article is on the the workings of Iraq's Parliament.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I blogged here on Long War Journal's articles on the Iraqi executive and ministerial bodies and the efforts to build infrastructure and provide services. The article provide an in depth analysis of what is going right, what is going wrong, and the challenges being faced. LWJ continues its series with a look now at the Iraqi legislative body.

Understanding the constitutional structure and current composition of Iraq’s legislative branch is a prerequisite to analyzing the much-maligned progress of key legislation. As with the executive, the political diversity of Iraq’s legislature presents many significant challenges and a few opportunities to meeting the legislative benchmarks considered important to stability and reconciliation.

The structure and function of the Iraqi legislature

Iraq’s Constitution ostensibly vests legislative power in two entities: the Federation Council and the Council of Representatives, or COR. The nonexistent Federation Council is vaguely outlined as a body of representatives from various regions, but its exact authority and makeup remain open issues to be determined by the COR. The COR is Iraq’s functioning parliament, consisting of 275 elected officials who oversee the executive branch, pass laws, ratify treaties, and approve the nominations of government officials.

Elected in December 2005 and having first met on March 16, 2006, parliament members also elect Iraq’s president, who in turn appoints the prime minister from the majority political coalition within the COR. The body is supposed to meet for two four-month sessions per year with two-month breaks in January-February and July-August, though this schedule has been altered as needed when members have failed to meet legislative deadlines. The COR is currently in one of these special sessions because its members failed to pass the 2008 budget at the close of 2007. A minimum of 138 members is required for quorum, though the parliament can continue to function with less if the previous legislative session was never closed. Poor attendance has been a problem in regular sessions.

“On any given day, about 100, sometimes fewer, sometimes more members are absent,” said a Western diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity. “The speaker and … even more strongly, the first deputy speaker, have made the point that the members should attend and that it’s their responsibility. However, it remains the case that many members do not attend.”

While many members miss sessions, “real” political agreements are often brokered outside of official COR debate, spurring sufficient participation when issues come to a vote. This paradigm is similar to how the US Congress works, though Iraq’s parliament has a greater degree of absenteeism.

“When there’s an important vote and once the political agreements done behind the scenes have been accomplished, what usually happens is the membership will come together and the bloc leaders are able to pull enough people in so that a vote can take place,” said the diplomat. “When push comes to shove, [they] can be gathered together.”

Laws can be created in two ways: initiated by the executive branch and passed to the COR for debate and ratification, or initiated by the COR, passed to the components of the executive, and then bounced back through the parliament. Typically, bills are drafted by the prime minister’s office, then debated and approved by the Council of Ministers – a body within the executive branch consisting of about 40 of the heads of Iraqi ministries – then moved on for debate, revision, potential judicial review, and approval by the parliament.

After majority approval by parliament, bills are presented to the Presidency Council – the president and two vice presidents – who can sign it into law or veto the legislation. Once signed, the proposed legislation becomes law after it is published in the official government gazette, a summary of parliamentary action. This extended debate process – spanning fractious deliberative bodies in both the executive branch (the 40-member Council of Ministers) and the legislative branch (the 275-member COR) – demands a level of coordination difficult for Iraq’s politically diverse government and prohibits speedy passage of legislation.

“The lack of coordination and cohesion between the executive and the legislature … is a particular problem that has to be solved in order to make the kind of political progress that this country needs,” said the Western diplomat. “And there are people working very hard to get that political cooperation. It’s not easy, but I think things are headed in that direction. There are some signs of the urgency, the need for political leadership by the prime minister and the Council of Ministers.”

“[It’s] very difficult for a democratic body of legislators – let alone an executive branch with a ministerial group that’s a mixed and fractious coalition – to come to agreement on key things,” said Phil Reeker, Counselor for Public Affairs at the State Department. Reeker noted that democratic processes familiar to Westerners are brand new to Iraqis, who have also been struggling to learn how to govern in the midst of extreme violence.

“Now, with better security, you do have a little less trouble at least getting to parliament and focusing on passing legislation,” said Reeker.

. . . Iraq’s parliament is composed of political blocs made up of various parties that reflect the demographic diversity of the country.

The speaker of the COR is Mahmoud Mashadani, who is with the largest Sunni bloc. First Deputy Speaker Sheikh Khalid al Attiya is an independent within the largest Shia bloc, and Second Deputy Speaker Arif Tayfur is a member of the main Kurdish bloc. The sectarian groupings are reflected in the leadership as well as the composition of the COR itself. The membership changes frequently because of resignations or political moves, and various US officials can offer only approximate numbers for the distribution of political parties and blocs within parliament.

The largest political bloc is the United Iraq Alliance (UIA), a primarily Shia group that currently holds about 85 seats. The UIA is dominated by two better-known political parties: the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) and Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s Islamic Dawa Party.

Some analysts consider the conservative Shia SIIC an Iranian proxy, others see it as a US ally, and all regard it as the major competitor to the Sadrists in southern Iraq. Recent platform changes by SIIC have stressed nationalism and distanced the party from Iran, including a politically loaded name change and pledge to seek guidance from Iraq’s top cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, as opposed to a previous focus on Velayat-e-Faqih, a school of Shiite governance led by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Analysts debate the motivation behind the changes – some argue they earnestly reflect the Iraqi nationalism and anti-Persian sentiment among SIIC’s constituency, while others suggest the shift has been executed with Tehran’s practical blessing. In any case, the new platform generally advances the concept of nationalism, which could enable reconciliation.

The Islamic Dawa Party is a conservative Shia Islamist party that had been outlawed by the previous regime and its members sentenced to death by Saddam Hussein. Dawa also has ties to Iran, a relationship historically characterized by the party’s previous support of the Iranian revolution and Tehran’s welcome of exiled Dawa leaders and backing of their insurgency against Hussein. But the relationship is complex; party leadership moved from Iran to London in the late eighties, and Dawa officials have been involved in forging ties to both the US and emerging Sunni leadership. These moves include recent negotiations regarding a long-term security and economic agreement with the US, the legal authorization for continued US military presence in Iraq, the government’s adoption of grassroots Sunni security forces, and an increased distribution of reconstruction funds to the predominantly Sunni Anbar province.

Another large Shia group of about 28 seats is held by the Sadrist Movement led by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al Sadr, the son of legendary deceased cleric Mohammad Sadeq al Sadr. The younger Sadr has very close ties to Tehran, characterized by his flight to Iran at the start of the US military “surge” in February 2007. And in contrast to SIIC’s moves away from Iranian influence, Sadr is studying to become a cleric under Khamenei’s Velayat-e-Faqih. The larger Sadrist Movement is a loose confederation of elements not completely under al Sadr’s control, some of which were complicit in past sectarian cleansing, others which are more moderate.

. . . The Kurds are largely grouped in the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan (DPAK), considered the most unified voting bloc in the COR. The DPAK consists of 53 members primarily drawn from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The bloc is closely allied with US interests, though its members are strong advocates of weak federalism, and sometimes make independent moves that seem to conflict with Iraqi nationalism. Independent or otherwise affiliated Kurds hold another five or six seats outside of the DPAK.

The current major Sunni bloc is called the Tawaffuk or Iraqi National Concord Front, which holds about 40 seats and is composed of three parties: the General Council for the People of Iraq (GCPI), the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), and the Iraqi National Dialogue Council (INDC). Tawaffuk’s platform is anti-Iranian and pro-Sunni, though its parties are not considered widely representative of Iraq’s larger Sunni population by some American officials, because many Sunni leaders sat out of national elections.

The Sunni bloc is led by Ayad al Samarrai of the IIP, and its former chairman is the controversial Adnan al Dulaymi of the GCPI, who is widely believed to be involved in insurgency and sectarian violence. Terrorism charges against Dulaymi have spurred several US and Iraqi raids on his offices over the past two years and calls by other members of parliament for his prosecution. Last December, Dulaymi’s son and many of his bodyguards were detained in connection with the manufacture of car bombs, which “provoked issues within both Tawaffuk and … a great deal of controversy and some significant time within the COR,” said the Western diplomat. “Several days running were spent talking about his issues within the COR debate.” Dulaymi, who has survived several assassination attempts, has thus far avoided prosecution because rivals fear a backlash against his arrest.

. . . Overall, the distribution of sectarian-based political affiliations in the COR is about 45 percent Shia, 20 percent Kurdish, and 15 percent Sunni Arab, roughly reflecting the proportion of the three major ethnicities and sects in larger Iraqi society. The remaining 20 percent – approximately 54 seats – are divided between Shia and Sunnis who are explicit secularists, independents, and minority representatives, . . .

Change wrought by the Anbar tribal Awakening is a vital component of evaluating the interest and intent of Iraq’s Sunnis, as well as possibilities for Iraqi federalism and long-term reconciliation. The current Sunni representatives in parliament are “minimally” representative of the wider Sunni population because most Sunni leaders and tribal structures boycotted the last national elections, according to various US military and intelligence officials.

“Because most Sunnis boycotted those elections, IIP was able to sweep the field,” said a US intelligence official speaking on condition of anonymity. “But despite being the Sunni voice in Baghdad, they have been completely unable to prevent either the anti-Sunni pogroms in Baghdad or the rise of al-Qaeda in the Sunni provinces.”

Provincial elections that are scheduled to take place in October and subsequent national elections in late 2009 will be important, as they will give Sunnis with the popular and US-allied Sahawa al Iraq, or Iraqi Awakening, official status within the government. This will consolidate their de facto influence through democratic means, codifying both Sunni rejection of insurgency and lasting status within larger Iraqi society.

“While a number of the sheikhs are skeptical about the prospects for democracy in Iraq, as a general rule they are more than happy to consolidate the practical power they already wield through democratic means,” said the US intelligence official. “The Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) and its Tawaffuk Front coalition partners recognize the amount of popular support that Sahawa al Iraq has, and have done everything in their power to stall local elections until they can find a way to ... retain their current power.”

Some US officials argue that the emergent Sunni leaders are predisposed to reconcile and realistic about their new role in Iraq society.

“[Reconciliation] would just be letting them come back and be the minority they are and now recognize themselves to be,” said Stanton. “Because being a minority doesn’t mean you’re powerless in this parliamentary system, because the Shia are fairly fractured and there will be Shia from time-to-time who will caucus with the Sunnis and Kurds to make deals.”

While the media has focused on a narrative of unrelenting sectarianism as the cause of the COR’s inertia on passing legislation, many American officials believe this view ignores some context, including the decentralized design of the government under the Iraqi constitution and a lack of experience with democracy among Iraqi officials.

“[Sectarianism] is clearly an element; political parties are formed along sectarian lines and political blocs, too,” said Reeker. “That’s not uncommon in countries all over the world. That does not have to be a recipe for disaster. What it means is finding the mechanisms under the constitution they have to get through those things and do what it takes to govern, so that all the parties in government and the citizenry can feel secure and comfortable.”

And despite the splintered character of the country’s political and demographic makeup, as well as the enhanced sectarianism that flared during the bloody conflict in 2006, both Americans and Iraqis are quick to describe the existence of a strong nationalistic sentiment in Iraq.

“There’s a sort of nationalism in Iraq that frankly people don’t realize,” said Reeker. “Sectarianism is not as etched or hard-wired into the society here … as people think based on what was absolutely brutal, horrific sectarian violence … after the Samarra mosque bombing in 2006. If you look back in history, Iraq was a place where the Sunnis and Shia mixed, it was a place where there was a certain strong Arab nationalism. So [reconciliation is] something they have to keep working. They have these very difficult debates, but they have found certain mechanisms … to get some of this done, whether it’s passing budgets, executing them, getting money moved out to the provinces.”

With improved security, only time will reveal if such nationalism will result in sufficient accord within the Iraqi legislature. Many US officials shun the term “reconciliation” in favor of “accommodation,” given the difficult diversity of Iraq’s sects, ethnicities, and interests.

Read the entire article.

Read More...

Summary only...