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Seeds Of Gridlock In Iraq My Op Ed How

Juan Cole 03/14/2004

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Seeds of Gridlock in Iraq

My op-ed, “How the US is sowing gridlock in Iraq” is available online at the San Jose Mercury News. I worry in it about the Rube Goldberg executive in the Basic Law or interim constitution, with its three presidents and a prime minister (the presidents have to make all decisions unanimously as a council!). I worry about the single-chamber legislature, with its assured Shiite majority (have you ever been in a parliamentary minority and tried to stand against the majority? You just get voted down every time). I worry about the small ethnically-based parties with militias that have the real political momentum in Iraq. I am skeptical that this system is going to be a beacon to the worldly Syrians and the urbane Egyptians, as Richard Perle (that great Arabist) insists.

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About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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