And another thing…for their own reasons, commentators on both the left and the right have condemned scraps of Iraq’s draft constitution for its apparent attempts to enshrine Islamic law and clerical authority in the political structure of the country. Leftists condemn this in some ways less out of personal conviction than out of a snide desire to throw it in the Bush administration’s face (‘See! In your ignorance of local political realities, you’ve gone and created a fundamentalist state!’); they also decry the political community’s backing down from Western-style commitments to women’s rights as given in the TAL. Right-wingers see any movement towards incorporating Islam into the constitution as inherently threatening to the west.

And yet both are wrong. Yes, there are non-Muslims in Iraq, and a significant minority of secularists. But any constitution that does not specifically grant a role to Islam will be seen as illegitimate by a majority of the population, including those whose very organization allows them to wield the most political power.

Moreover, there are several good reasons why incorporating (not to say co-opting) moderate Islamists into the political process is in itself a fantastic idea. Even in a state with weakened institutions and an uncertain division of powers, Islamic-oriented politicians will have to deal with the realities of political life; ideology will be a luxury they cannot afford in a development-hungry democracy.

And as Iraq builds its new governmental system, it will have the perfect opportunity to experiment with ways to Islamicize politics without making it impossible to run a modern state. In this, they will have the examples of Turkey and Iran (the latter of which was born in the Hawzas of Najaf, and was an authoritarianized version of the more democratic ideas which were current). They can take some elements of these systems (may I suggest the emphasis on democracy as the expression of the will of the Muslim community, the focus on development, realist foreign alliances, equality under the law, and nationalism, all of which are often flawed, but exist as guiding concepts in either or both nations) and eliminate others (clerical oversight, military oversight, enforced secularism, support of regional extremist groups, statism, and rigid ideology).

Finally, even if they cannot create a successful synthesis of Islamism and democracy, the failed experiment itself will have been important in relieving the palpable pressure for a role for Islam in running Iraq. Much the same could be said of any Arab country, and the failure of states in the region to allow moderate Islamists access to political power through democracy is certainly not helping in draining the swamp of extremism.

So I applaud the efforts of the constitutional drafting community to incorporate Islam into Iraq’s political structure. If the Sunnis and Shiites can agree on how to do this (a very big if, granted), then surely we too can look beyond our own limited ideological horizons and support the experiment.

Gefaehrlich...

There is a link between Iraq and the London bombings. This is undeniable. The bombers explicitly pointed to their anger over civilian casualties in Iraq prior to the attacks, and it is certain that the feelings of inter-communal tension amongst people who see the invasion of Iraq primarily as a Christian invasion of a Muslim land are kept at the boiling point by the conflict. Such people then become more receptive to the dark millennial vision of violent terrorists, leading them to join these terrorists, or at least condone their actions.

This much we should admit without hesitation. And yet no one seems to be going the next step and asking what this means. Does merely making these connections automatically imply that the war on Iraq was wrong? The answer, of course, is no, and it is not an ideological answer, merely a rational one.

After all, there is a danger to discussing the war as a propaganda victory for Jihadist recruiters. In one sense, it certainly is that. However, thinking of it in these terms confuses the causes of terror with the justifications given and makes it all the more tempting to avoid the hard choices necessary to address these causes.

Perhaps it is their underlying utopian tendencies that make leftist commentators unable to accept that major foreign policy actions all come with costs. An increased risk of terror attacks in the short to medium term is certainly a big one. Thousands of dead Iraqi civilians and Iraqi and coalition security forces is another big one, certainly incalculable for those who have lost a loved one. For the US, declining credibility in much of the rest of the world is yet another cost. Do these costs outweigh potential benefits of the war (assuming, for argument’s sake, that there are some)? If you answer yes, then congratulations. You’ve made a decision.

But the idea that doing anything that would increase the recruitment capabilities of violent Jihadists is by definition wrong is to give these groups ultimate sovereignty over foreign policy decisions by default. Rather, the risk of attack by violent terror groups (which, it must be said, existed prior to Iraq, and would remain today even without it) is just that: a risk, and one that we should be better prepared than we have been to factor into any major policy decision. Admittedly, it is difficult to thing of 56 human lives, and potentially more in the future, as a cost. Yet if we do not, then the Jihadists have already gotten what they wanted.