Someone Gets It On Iraq's Constitution

Amir Taheri gets it:

But if this was "a major setback," as some dons of dilatory deeds have claimed, why did Iraqi lawmakers break into spontaneous applause after they had voted to postpone the constitutional debate? Did they know something that the serial filibusterers on Capitol Hill didn't?

The answer is that while the postponement was a tactical setback for the Iraqi lawmakers, it represented a strategic advance for the practice of democracy in the newly liberated country. The Iraqis working on the draft resisted intense pressure from all quarters, including Grand Ayatollah Ali-Muhammad Sistani (the Shiite top cleric) and Zalmay Khalilzad (the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad) to brush disagreements under the carpet and come up with "something."

They were told that they should set aside the most contentious issues and offer the Assembly the apple-pie and motherhood parts of their exercise. But the drafters understood that the object of democracy is not to make everyone happy on every issue every time. Indeed, the opposite is often the case — if only because democratic decisions, based on compromise as they're bound to be, never fully satisfy anyone.