Mary Mostert
The Iraq Constitution follows America’s own constitutional history
By Mary Mostert
The Iraq Daily reported today "a final draft of a constitution would be adopted by parliament on Thursday, despite its rejection by minority Sunni Arabs and clashes between rival factions among the Shi'ite majority." Reuters reported "Sunni members of the drafting committee reject over 20 items in the draft but they are most fiercely opposed to federalism, which could potentially give Shi'ites and Kurds some control over oil resources in the north and south."
The Sunnis are demanding "unanimous" approval of all factions in the Constitutional Convention before it is sent to the voters.
In the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia the same two issues also threatened the document voted on by delegates from the 12 states that sent delegates. Rhode Island refused, just like the Sunnis, to even PARTICIPATE in the convention. Of the 74 delegates who were appointed by their state governments to attend the convention, only 55 ever actually did so. It took eleven days after the appointed day of opening the convention on May 14, 1787 to even have a quorum needed to open the Convention. On May 25th, when at least 38 of the delegates had shown up, George Washington was elected as president of the Convention.
Some delegates, such as Patrick Henry of Virginia, not only refused to attend the Convention but, once the Constitution was approved by the Convention after four months of often bitter debate, also campaigned vigorously to get Virginia voters to reject it.
In Iraq, it appears, a major stumbling block is who gets the money from the nation's oil resources — which under Saddam Hussein was spent mostly to build palaces and weapons for Saddam Hussein and 20% of the Iraq population, the Sunnis, who supported him. In the US Constitution the major stumbling block was slavery — which the majority of the delegates wanted to end and two states, South Carolina and Georgia, wanted to be protected in the Constitution.
The compromise to obtain the "unanimous" support of the 12 states that had sent delegates was the decision to count African slaves as "3/5ths" of a person and to allow the slave trade to continue for 20 years. It was, of course, this "compromise" that led to the Civil War some 70 years later and which still haunts America to this very day.
Oddly, the issue that columnist George Will identified in a recent article as "the great compromise" in Philadelphia in 1787 was not about slavery but about "a bicameral legislature, with proportional representation of population in one chamber, equal representation of the states in the other." This was "necessary," according to Will "because American differences were comparatively negligible" whereas "many Shiites and Sunnis think of each other, stenches in God's nostrils."
Well — that wasn't the case at all in 1787, as I pointed out in my book "The Threat of Anarchy Leads to the Constitution of the United States." Religion was a very BIG stumbling block in 1787. After all, the various states had been FOUNDED to accommodate different religious groups — i.e. the Catholics, the Puritans, the Quakers, the Church of England, etc. In 1641 the Virginians, for example, had passed a law that prohibited a "popish priest" to remain in the colony "more than 5 days." In Puritan Massachusetts in 1660, Mary Dyer, a Quaker, was hung for her persistent support of Quaker beliefs.
Then, of course, there were the Deists who rejected the notion that God was even interested in or involved in the affairs of man anyway.
It appears that almost none of today's commentators, who have such a negative view of the Iraqi effort to write and ratify a new Constitution have any knowledge of what happened when it was the Americans in the 18th century facing the same problems. Benjamin Franklin addressed this issue on the day the Constitution was first read to the delegates as follows:
"Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion think themselves in possession of all truth and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele, a protestant...tells the Pope that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong."
Human nature hasn't change much in the past 200 years. The Iraqis face most of the same exact problems that Americans faced in 1787. So far, the Iraqis seem to be coming together with a lot greater speed than we Americans did. First, it took 8 years to win the Revolution, whereas Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in a matter of days — thanks to the American Army. It has been only a matter of a few months for them to get to the Constitution writing stage — whereas it took the USA 11 years from writing the Declaration of Independence to calling the Constitutional Convention.
After the Constitution was adopted by the delegates — which in effect is where the Iraqis are as of today — it took Delaware only a little over 2 months to ratify it whereas both Virginia and Massachusetts, ratified the Constitution ONLY if amendments to their liking were immediately adopted.
While Virginia today honors all its delegates to the Constitutional Convention, most of the delegates originally selected, including Patrick Henry who never attended but also George Mason and Benjamin Harrison opposed Washington's federalism (just as the Sunnis oppose the Shiite and Kurd Federalism.)
As the issue was being debated, George Washington wrote to Lafayette in Paris with the observation that "It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the delegates from so many different states (which states you know are also different from each other in their manners, circumstances and prejudices) should unite in forming a system of national government, so little liable to well founded objections.." Washington warned that "We are not to expect perfection in this world."
Certainly history, the Civil War and the racial conflicts that persist to this day proves Washington's point — that the Constitution was not perfect. Quite possibly, the Iraqi Constitution will not be perfect either.
However, it is so superior to what was going on in Iraq just a couple of years ago that every person on the planet who values freedom and self-government and especially Americans should be celebrating.
© Mary Mostert
The Iraq Daily reported today "a final draft of a constitution would be adopted by parliament on Thursday, despite its rejection by minority Sunni Arabs and clashes between rival factions among the Shi'ite majority." Reuters reported "Sunni members of the drafting committee reject over 20 items in the draft but they are most fiercely opposed to federalism, which could potentially give Shi'ites and Kurds some control over oil resources in the north and south."
The Sunnis are demanding "unanimous" approval of all factions in the Constitutional Convention before it is sent to the voters.
In the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia the same two issues also threatened the document voted on by delegates from the 12 states that sent delegates. Rhode Island refused, just like the Sunnis, to even PARTICIPATE in the convention. Of the 74 delegates who were appointed by their state governments to attend the convention, only 55 ever actually did so. It took eleven days after the appointed day of opening the convention on May 14, 1787 to even have a quorum needed to open the Convention. On May 25th, when at least 38 of the delegates had shown up, George Washington was elected as president of the Convention.
Some delegates, such as Patrick Henry of Virginia, not only refused to attend the Convention but, once the Constitution was approved by the Convention after four months of often bitter debate, also campaigned vigorously to get Virginia voters to reject it.
In Iraq, it appears, a major stumbling block is who gets the money from the nation's oil resources — which under Saddam Hussein was spent mostly to build palaces and weapons for Saddam Hussein and 20% of the Iraq population, the Sunnis, who supported him. In the US Constitution the major stumbling block was slavery — which the majority of the delegates wanted to end and two states, South Carolina and Georgia, wanted to be protected in the Constitution.
The compromise to obtain the "unanimous" support of the 12 states that had sent delegates was the decision to count African slaves as "3/5ths" of a person and to allow the slave trade to continue for 20 years. It was, of course, this "compromise" that led to the Civil War some 70 years later and which still haunts America to this very day.
Oddly, the issue that columnist George Will identified in a recent article as "the great compromise" in Philadelphia in 1787 was not about slavery but about "a bicameral legislature, with proportional representation of population in one chamber, equal representation of the states in the other." This was "necessary," according to Will "because American differences were comparatively negligible" whereas "many Shiites and Sunnis think of each other, stenches in God's nostrils."
Well — that wasn't the case at all in 1787, as I pointed out in my book "The Threat of Anarchy Leads to the Constitution of the United States." Religion was a very BIG stumbling block in 1787. After all, the various states had been FOUNDED to accommodate different religious groups — i.e. the Catholics, the Puritans, the Quakers, the Church of England, etc. In 1641 the Virginians, for example, had passed a law that prohibited a "popish priest" to remain in the colony "more than 5 days." In Puritan Massachusetts in 1660, Mary Dyer, a Quaker, was hung for her persistent support of Quaker beliefs.
Then, of course, there were the Deists who rejected the notion that God was even interested in or involved in the affairs of man anyway.
It appears that almost none of today's commentators, who have such a negative view of the Iraqi effort to write and ratify a new Constitution have any knowledge of what happened when it was the Americans in the 18th century facing the same problems. Benjamin Franklin addressed this issue on the day the Constitution was first read to the delegates as follows:
"Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion think themselves in possession of all truth and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele, a protestant...tells the Pope that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong."
Human nature hasn't change much in the past 200 years. The Iraqis face most of the same exact problems that Americans faced in 1787. So far, the Iraqis seem to be coming together with a lot greater speed than we Americans did. First, it took 8 years to win the Revolution, whereas Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in a matter of days — thanks to the American Army. It has been only a matter of a few months for them to get to the Constitution writing stage — whereas it took the USA 11 years from writing the Declaration of Independence to calling the Constitutional Convention.
After the Constitution was adopted by the delegates — which in effect is where the Iraqis are as of today — it took Delaware only a little over 2 months to ratify it whereas both Virginia and Massachusetts, ratified the Constitution ONLY if amendments to their liking were immediately adopted.
While Virginia today honors all its delegates to the Constitutional Convention, most of the delegates originally selected, including Patrick Henry who never attended but also George Mason and Benjamin Harrison opposed Washington's federalism (just as the Sunnis oppose the Shiite and Kurd Federalism.)
As the issue was being debated, George Washington wrote to Lafayette in Paris with the observation that "It appears to me, then, little short of a miracle, that the delegates from so many different states (which states you know are also different from each other in their manners, circumstances and prejudices) should unite in forming a system of national government, so little liable to well founded objections.." Washington warned that "We are not to expect perfection in this world."
Certainly history, the Civil War and the racial conflicts that persist to this day proves Washington's point — that the Constitution was not perfect. Quite possibly, the Iraqi Constitution will not be perfect either.
However, it is so superior to what was going on in Iraq just a couple of years ago that every person on the planet who values freedom and self-government and especially Americans should be celebrating.
© Mary Mostert
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