Nation-forging is a messy business. I have no opinion about the Iraqi Constitution, not having read the draft. However, here's one thing to keep in mind as all the nay-sayers come out of the woodwork to tell us that compromises can't be reached, or that the compromises that are reached are distasteful. Remember that forging our own Constitution was a seemingly insuperable task given the varied interests involved. To form a union strong enough to be worthy of the name, the Founders had to accept something extremely distasteful to them: slavery. Although "the peculiar institution" violated the very premise of the Declaration and therefore of the Constitution itself, the best they could do was to put it on what Lincoln called "the road to ultimate extinction" by confining slavery to the states where it already existed and banning the importation of slaves at a date certain. They couldn't kill it outright, but they could make sure it died. (Abraham Lincoln only got into politics when the Missouri Compromise in effect overruled the Constitution and allowed slavery to expand). It wasn't a perfect solution, and so ashamed were the Founders of slavery that they never mention the word or the word "slave" anywhere --not even in the infamous* "3/5 compromise" that dealt with how to count them in the census. Someone has said that "the Constitution blushed" on this matter. At any rate, when the alarmists ring bells about mentioning Muslim law in the Iraqi constitution, we have to pay attention to how it's treated and not faint at first sight. All may be well. Not saying it is, but it may be. Here's Claremontster John Eastman on Hugh Hewitt's show making some similar points. Worth reading.
*Actually, not so infamous. People like to say that the Constitution once counted blacks as only 3/5 a person, but the compromise was not a commentary on negro personhood, but an effort to limit the influence of Slave states in the Congress by not allowing them to count non-voting slaves in the census --which determined the number of Congressmen that state would get. The Founders wanted to count the votes only of free men, the South wouldn't go along, hence the compromise --but one aimed again at putting slavery on the road to extinction. The 3/5 compromise said to the Southern States, you control the black man, but let's not pretend you truly represent him.
