Apparently a deal has been reached over the Iraqi constitution as now several Sunni parties are urging the people to vote for it.

The Sunnis will be allowed to submit amendments to the constitution once the new parliment is in power, the parliment will vote on it then there will be a referendum if needed. While this certainly helps the chances of the constitution passing one has to wonder whether it will do any good?

After all many of the terrorists in Iraq are not Iraqi and are not fighting because they want a different constitution, they don't want a constitution at all. They want some 7th century dark age caliphate. So I don't see them letting up because the Iraqis vote this thing through. Many of the terrorists come from Saudi Arabia and Syria, and Zarqawi is Jordanian. It might get the local sunni population to start informing on these terrrorists, but it will not get them to stop fighting. Now, I know no one has made the claim that it would get them to stop, but many have acted like it will make it harder for the terrorists to wage their campaign. Maybe, maybe not. We can only wait and see.

But a constitution is not a magic wish from a genie to make everything in the country all better, it is a promise between the people on how to run a government, and that promise is only as good as the peoples willingness to abide by it. Many a constitution reads well on paper only to be ignored by the government. After all the USSR constitution promised religious freedom to all people. We know how well they kept that promise.

Even in our country the ratification of the constitution didn't make the country more unified or solve many of the major problems. There were still those who didn't like the constitution, they just went from anti-federalists to jeffersonians. Slavery wasn't solved by the ratification and the country wasn't really unified until after the civil war. Can we expect Iraq to be different?

The Iraq constitution will be a win for the new democracy, and for the Bush administration. It will be a step in the right direction for the country, but it will not end the problems that country faces, and we're going to have to be patient and keep fighting for a while.