Before the Iraq War, one of the reasons that I never took the "freedom & democracy" talk seriously was that I assumed the administration had thought through what a truly 'democratic' Iraq would look like.

Democratic elections in 'secular' Islamic states like Morocco and Turkey have often elected Islamist governments that the secular military elite have had to take down by coup. One of the realities of the Muslim world is that there exists in most countries a large population of disaffected Islamists.

I just assumed that the Bush administration realized that a truly democratically elected government in Iraq would be Shia-dominated, and would reflect Islamist principles of governance that are in and of themselves anti-democratic... at least in terms of the way we in the West think of rights and the legitimate basis for political authority.

I assumed that the Bushites would topple the Saddam government and put another Sunni strongman in power. That had seemed to be the preference after the First Gulf War when the US stood by and let the Shia and Kurds be slaughtered. Bush I's call for the Iraqi people to rise up and overthrow Saddam had apparently been code for "Sunni generals".

So now, due to a truly appalling lack of pre-invasion planning, and apparently a complete disconnect from reality, we are looking at an Iraq whose Constitution will ultimately be based on sharia law, and religious rulings from Shia clerics.

All I can say is WTF? One of the nice things about Iraq over the last several decades was that it was a secular state. Women had full access to legal rights and Western-style freedoms. What we are already seeing is that this cluster-'you know what' of an invasion has lead to women being much less free than they were under Saddam. Men too have lost freedoms. Religious extremism is such that barbers won't even trim men's beards in Baghdad anymore because they are afraid of retaliation from religious fanatics.

It is truly appalling to think that what we may end up creating in Iraq is an Iranian client state ruled by Imams, or an all-out civil war, or both.

Check out Juan Cole's "Informed Comment" for a good rundown on the draft constitution, and some of the political maneuvering.

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