Iraq's anti-democratic SOFA
Wright and Chandrasekaran, writing in today's WaPo, have a piece that outlines Colin's Powell's plans for the six-month transition to (the appearance of) Iraqi self-rule.
The plans include an inappropriately early deadline for conclusion of a "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA). Hence the headline here.
(The WaPo story uses yet more from Robin Wright's Dec. 29 interview with Powell... Truly, a gift that has gone on giving, for many days, for the WaPo editors. Plus, today they are actually finally posting the transcript of the whole interview.... So why didn't they do that right away for the the rest of us poor slobs instead of parceling out the goodies over five days, huh?)
Anyway, the highlights of this timetable for a highly flawed "transition":
- Feb. 28: deadline for "agreement"--presumably between the Coalition provisional Authority and its near-puppets of the "Iraqi Governing Council"-- on the content of "Transitional Administrative Law". The TAL will basically set the rules for the Rube-Goldberg-style non-election process that will bring into being the "Iraqi Successor Government" that takes over nominal power in the country on or before June 30...
Mar. 31: deadline for agreement on the "Status of Forces Agreement" (SOFA) that will govern the continued presence of US troops in Iraq subsequent to the Rube Goldberg process...
June 30: after completion of the Rube Goldberg process, the "handover" of power to the non-elected body takes place...
First, the still deeply undemocratic nature of the process by which the Iraqi Successor Government will be chosen. As Wright and Chandrasekaran report, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani,
- a Shiite Muslim cleric who has a larger public following than any other Iraqi, has demanded elections to pick Baghdad's post-occupation government. But no compromise has been reached, despite a stream of communications among Sistani, Bremer and the Governing Council -- leaving the legitimacy of the process in doubt, U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
Second, the fact that they want to conclude the SOFA some four months before they even have something as shakily legitmate (or, perhaps, as still totally illegitimate) as the "Iraqi Successor Government" to conclude it with.
In the immortal words of the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, this is not just nonsense, but nonsense on stilts!
How so?
In the cases of both Germany and Japan, the transition from American/"Allied" occupation of the 1940s to independence some 5-8 years later was accompanied by the newly independent, elected governments signing--in their own names--SOFAs with the US that allowed and regulated the continued presence of US forces in those countries subsequent to independence. Countries that were previous colonizers of other people's lands--as they went through "de-colonization" sometimes also went through a similar process. And sometimes not, depending on the state of relations as the previous colonizers left.
But the norm was always left in place that conclusion of a SOFA that would allow the continued presence of a foreign force AFTER independence was the prerogative of the independent, sovereign government.
And here Powell is, seeking to lock Iraq into a SOFA with the US by means of an "agreement" concluded between the US government and--wait for it-- its own creation, the IGC????
So then, we would have a SOFA in place from March 31 on-- and after that the CPA would go through the expensive and potentially divisive process designed by the eminent Dr. Rube Goldberg* to arrive at an Iraqi Successor Government. But from the get-go, the "Successor Government" has no opportunity to express any views regarding the already-existing SOFA???
Colin Powell is an apparently smart and wise person. Why on earth is he peddling this nonsense? Does he think the rest of us--including all 24 million of Iraq's people-- are totally stupid??
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* Clarification for non-US readers: I am using irony here. "Rube Goldberg" is a US-culture reference to an imaginary machine that is extremely complex and cannot possibly work in practice. This is the best description I can think of for the extremely complex scheme of (CPA-controlled) caucuses, meetings etc, that is, according to the Nov. 15 2003 plan, supposed to generate a "legitimate" Iraqi Successor Government by June 30, 2004.