From: Gene McAloon 

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 11:53:38 -0500, "John Beamish"
 wrote:

>No ... the US proposals are the only viable soluition as far as American
>interests are concerned.

Very much the contrary. It is in the interests of everyone, the US, Iraq,
the Arab world and the larger world that Iraq be made a viable, working
democracy. That cannot be done by pandering to one ethnic group at the
expense of the others given the enormous fissiparous tendencies that
historically have riven that country.

That is a central fact that determines how the country is to be organized.
Simply giving power to the majority Shiites will not cut it. There must,
absolutely must, be a constitution in place that guarantees protection for
all ethnic groups. Without it, you simply set up a government that
guarantees another revolution and another dictator.

It is long past time that people give up their obsession with Bush-the-war-maker
and start to think of what is best for all concerned now. As much as I
despise Bush and everything he represents, nonetheless his prescription for
post war Iraq is a good one and should be supported. Babbling on mindlessly
about democracy without a constitution that protects the rights of
minorities doesn't cut it. Babbling on equally mindlessly about alleged US
interests only doesn't cut it either.

Forget your hatred of Bush for a moment and look at the facts. Simply
opposing everything Bush wants in this context is not very useful or even
very bright. Unless, of course, you would like the whole Bush-Iraq thing to
fail, thus probably guaranteeing failure of his re-election chances.  No
one wants to see that ass out of office more than I, but there are larger
issues here beyond whether the US is saddled with another four years of
Bush extremism.  We Americans can survive that easily enough, but what
happens to the Arab world if the reconstituted Iraq fails?  I don't like to
think about that.

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