Could someone let me know where to find the Post or Times article predicting the descent of the Dark Ages on Afghanistan because of the provisions in their Constitution?
Yet, almost two years later, Hamid Karzai is still President, no Islamic Revolution, record numbers of women are registering to vote and registering to run for the Wolesi Jirga, for which there is a provision stating that a minimum required number of seats that must go to women. The only threats to women come from the neo-Taliban. All ethnic groups have equal rights under the Constitution, and a draft for the new national anthem came out last week, the text of which symbolizes the equality of the different ethnic groups. (And Afghanistan is FAR more ethnically diverse than is Iraq.)
Meanwhile, Instapundit gathered a good collection of links with commentary on the new Iraqi constitution and notes:
My own sense is that this stuff isn’t as important as we like to make it. Americans are unusually legalistic and unusually focused on constitutions. But plenty of constitutions have wonderful language on paper (the old Soviet constitution was great that way) and plenty of countries (Britain, for example) manage to get by without written constitutions at all. What matters more is political culture. If the Iraqi people want a free, prosperous country and are willing to work for it, they’ll get that. If they don’t, or aren’t, then they won’t.
