Iraqi constitution as US drawdown pretext?

Back in the 1990s, the rushed holding of an “election” was, in several recently strife-torn countries, used as a prime exit strategy for those other nations that were eager to withdraw their peacekeepers…
In the lead-up to last January’s election in Iraq, I spelled out a few scenarios for how those elections could be used as part of a strategy for a speedy US withdrawal. The Bush administration notably failed to take that opportunity.
Then, I started thinking they were seeking to rush the Constitution-writing exercise in Iraq through with very unseemly (and in the medium-term, counter-productive) speed … with a view to using the adoption of this hastily scrawled text as their pretext for — well, if not a total exit (though that would indeed be nice, wouldn’t it?)– but at least, a significant drawdown in the US troop levels.
I wrote about the dangers of rushing the Constitution-writing project back in April, in a column in the CSM. I guess it took some other people a bit more time to see the same point. Yesterday, someone called “J Alexander Thier, director of the Project on Failed States at Stanford University” wrote an op-ed along similar lines in the NYT.
I have been thinking quite a bit more, recently, about the instructive precedent of the peace agreement “signed” between Israel and Lebanon back on May 17, 1983. That too was a political document imposed on a puppet government (in Lebanon) that had been installed by an occupying power (Israel). That agreement, too, was meant to form one of the major “political” gains that the occupying power was able to win at the end of an aggressive war of choice that had culminated in a broad occupation of the target country by the aggressor.
The May 17 agreement sketched out the terms of a “final peace agreement” between Israel and Lebanon that would have given Israel considerable control over security affairs in south Lebanon… (As such, it also contradicted the terms of the major extant UN Security Council resolution on the subject of Lebanpn, which called for an immediate and unconditional Israeli withdrawal from the whole country.)
The May 17 agreement notably did not represent the considered will of the Lebanese people, and turned out not to be worth the paper it was written on. Indeed, during the latter months of 1983, as the political tides within Lebanese society turned against the Israelis, the May 17 agreement increasingly became identified as the major obstacle to the country attaining some form of internal political accord; and in I think February 1984, President Amin Gemayyel simply abrogated it.
The same could oh, so easily happen to any Iraqi “Constitution” that is judged by the Iraqi people to have been forced down their throats by an occupying force… So why bother?
I should note here, that if the US intention is to use the Constitution-writing project as a “pretext” for a total and speedy withdrawal of US forces from the country, then I could stomach it. (Though again, why bother? Why not just do the withdrawal, and fast?) If, however, the Constitution-dictation– oops, sorry, constitution-“writing– project is being used as a ploy by the Americans to continue to exacerbate intra-Iraqi differences, then it is a very dangerous project that should be halted immediately.
Also, of course, under the Geneva Conventions, the occupying power is not supposed to change the major mechanisms of governance inside the occupied country, at all…
Back in April, I wrote:

In Baghdad and Washington… policymakers should certainly consider tweaking the terms of the US-designed TAL so that what is drafted and voted on this year would be only an interim constitution, rather than the final thing. At the same time, the two planned end-of-2005 referenda could be consolidated into a single vote – which would be both a general vote of confidence in the interim constitution and the election of a sovereign democratic government based on it. Smaller details of the final constitution could be worked out later, and submitted to a referendum at that time…
I’ve been studying transitions from military rule to democracy a lot recently. Such transitions are always very complex. In Iraq’s case, three major imperatives are now at stake. The country’s political leaders need to get the permanent constitution “right” – a complicated task that may take some time. But they also need to show their people speedy progress toward effective self-governance. Finally, they need to find a way to rapidly include representative Sunni Arab leaders in their ruling coalition, leaders who sadly did not emerge through last January’s election.
The latter two imperatives mean that the next national election – the one for a more representative and fully empowered government – should not be delayed. Delay beyond the scheduled December deadline could well be fatal. But at the same time, it’s hard to see how the final, permanent constitution can be gotten completely “right” before then. That’s why aiming for an interim constitution at this time, and only one rather than two further electoral events this year, may be the best solution.

What Thier wrote yesterday was this,

The purpose of any constitution is to channel conflict and competition into politics. A constitutional process is supposed to translate the political will of a nation into a concrete agreement. But this seems unlikely to occur given the current timetable – the Iraqi government has until Aug. 15 to pass a new constitution and until Oct. 15 to hold a public referendum on it.
If the nascent government is able to devise a constitution by mid-next month, then they’re probably missing the point. A constitution cannot be written in a few weeks by a handful of politicians at a conference table; creating a founding document requires the long ordeal of reaching political compromise and building trust. Given the intensity of conflict in Iraq, it is unlikely that broad political consensus can be achieved any time soon.
What Iraqi politicians need more than anything right now is to learn to trust each other…
If Iraq’s leaders end up with a constitution that looks good on paper but doesn’t reflect a real political agreement, they will have failed. Not only will the document be ineffective, but the Iraqi people will see the inability to reach a real compromise as a failure of the government as a whole. That way lies civil war.
So what can be done? First, the Iraqis must commit to a meaningful discussion among all factions as they draft the new constitution – and this will take time. The government must stop insisting that it will meet the Aug. 15 deadline and take advantage of the provision in the interim Constitution allowing them an extra six months to come up with a draft…

Pretty good sense, all in all. Three months after I’d written along much the same lines…