Bitch, Bitch, Bitch: Al-Reuters Now Slamming Iraqi Government For Being Too Ethnically Inclusive

Ahhhh... youth. I remember, when I was but a lad, knee-high to a June-bug, when liberal shitrags like Reuters were bemoaing the possibility that the Iraqi Shiites would wield their electoral majority too forcefully and shut out the rest of Iraq's ethnic groups from government. And this would of course render the government without "legitimacy" in the eyes of the only people who seem to matter (i.e., the terrorists whom Al-Reuters wish were still in charge), and would provoke the long-promised and long-anticipated (at least by the press) Iraqi Civil War.

This was... three weeks ago.

So now Iraq is forming a government based on quotas, to insure that all (or most, at least) major ethinc and religious groups are part of the new, free government... and al-Reuters, of course, changes its story completely and now whines about that:

Kurds want the defense portfolio, Shi'ites are after the interior and finance ministries, and even followers of an obscure sect that worships John the Baptist are demanding a seat in Iraq's cabinet.

Post-Saddam Hussein coalition politics has helped Iraq's quarrelsome sectarian and ethnic groups cooperate, but it is producing a system of government based on quotas which critics say hurts the country's cohesion and competitiveness.

"Such an approach simply does away with merit," senior Kurdish politician Mahmoud Othman told Reuters. "The hope lies in writing an enlightened constitution that replaces the present electoral system with more direct elections."

It's not that, in theory, and in a perfect world, this Kurdish politician is wrong. But we're not dealing with theory or a perfect world, and the quota system is the only system which will work at the moment.

But kudos to Reuters for finding one of the few politicians who doesn't grasp that and, of course, not providing a quote from one of the many thousands of politicians and academics in Iraq who could explain the situation and why the quota system is needed.

Thanks to BlakJack.

posted by Ace at 01:05 PM

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