As accorded by the deal struck between the main Shiite coalition and the Kurdish Alliance, a Shiite has been elected Prime Minister. This is the post with the task of forming and managing the government, while the presidential role is mostly ceremonial.

Iraq’s newly appointed presidential council yesterday chose Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shia, as prime minister, but the new leader indicated it might be some time before he can form a government.

Iraq’s president, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani who was himself elected by parliament only the day before, informed Mr Jaafari that he should form a government, only minutes after he and two vice-presidents took oaths of office.

Mr Jaafari’s selection is the penultimate step before the creation of Iraq’s first postwar elected government, an often acrimonious process that has taken over two months. But the final stage – the nomination and approval of a council of ministers – might take weeks.

“I hope I’m going to Äform a governmentÅ within two weeks, although I have a month,” Mr Jaafari said, referring to the time limit laid out in the Transitional Administrative Law, or TAL, governing Iraq’s transitional process.

In a press conference after the ceremony, Mr Jaafari shared the podium with Mr Talabani, and the image of a Kurdish president and a Shia prime minister standing side by side served as a potent reminder of how the political order in this formerly Sunni Arab-dominated country has been turned on its head.

Asked if he had any message for deposed president Saddam Hussein, who reportedly had been required to watch the session on television, Mr Talabani recited a couplet by Mohammed Mahdi al-Jawahiri, Iraq’s most famous 20th-century poet, exiled under the Ba’athist regime: “It is not our way to gloat.”

What we see with the Iraqi government is this: Kurdish president, Shiite prime minister, Shiite and Kurdish vice presidents, and a Sunni as the parliament speaker. It’s all a very interesting, and what looks a workable, compromise.

So when does the civil war start? I think that’s a good first question to ask the journalists who have branded the first two months of debate a disaster that could divide the country on sectarian lines. That fear — or for some, hope — is completely irrational. Need I remind us of our own history?

When drafting our Constitution, the thirteen American colonies were going in all sorts of directions. You had the federalists and anti-federalists. You had industrious, homogeneous Protestants up north, while in the south you had agricultural aristocrats using slaves for labor. And then you had the middle, a veritable caesar salad of ethnic groups.

There were Scottish, Irish, English, Indians, Dutch, French, Germans, and those who had lived in America since its founding. And more; many speaking languages other than English at the time.

Yet we ended up with a Constitution and a country to rally around. Our eventual Civil War was never fought on the basis of ethnic differences either, but serious compounding issues over nearly forty years that led to a war not of national origin, but of the preservation of our nation.

To think the Iraqis will descend into Civil War over ethnic issues now, when they have earned so much, is absurd.

In fact, one of the most fascinating aspects of the new Iraqi political dynamic is how exciting they are finding it all. Ali, who generally finds political debates boring, was definitely enjoying a session of parliament on TV.

The issue at discussion was the complaints about the breaches of Allawi’s government to the Interim law. Most of the government members were there although I didn’t see Allawi.

The hall seemed to be divided according to the members’ background and their parties. On the left side (my left) the majority were women with headscarves and clerics with turbans (obviously representatives of religious She’at parties) with few in suits. In this side there was Al Hakeem and Al Ja’afari. On the right side the majority appeared to be Kurdish, secular She’at and Sunnis. Here the known figures to me were Hazim Al Sha’alan and Barham Salih.
There were three papers submitted to the president for voting, but then some members made few objections that seemed valid to me and also to the majority of members.

One member objected that the letter addressed to the government should not be in the form of asking or pleading, “We represent the highest authority in this country. We don’t ask Allawi to do something, we force him to!” he said, and I liked that!

Then a young man in a suit, a Sadirist who said that he had a doctoral degree in law (yes, it confuses me too that educated people can be found among Sadr supporters) suggested to form a legal commission to decide which issues to vote on and which should not. But a woman in headscarf and Islamic dress from the same side objected saying that such suggestion would be a waste of time and will give legal advisers a very high authority, while the temporary regulations give the president the right to form special temporary councils to deal with various issues according to their specialty. After that Ibrahim Al Ja’afari spoke and agreed with the lady and so did other members. In the end her suggestion was approved but the president of the assembly referred to it as Al Ja’afari’s suggestion even though Al Ja’afari himself said it was the lady’s!

The incident with the lady lawmaker suggests that, obviously, kinks regarding gender still have to be flattened. That now a woman’s suggestion can be freely heard, considered, and approved is an incredible step forward in this country. But hear this about the Sadirist:

Then the Sadirist guy asked for ten minutes to discuss the issue of the prisoners which was on the schedule (not all prisoners, just the poor Mujahideen from the Sadirist trend). He took half of his time limit praising God and reading a verse from the Quran and then proceeded to attack “The blind British forces that are abusing the Mujahideen and holding them without right” As they’re Mujahideen but they’re still innocent! He asked for their release or else???????they’re going to protest!

Anyway his speech was met by a shy clapping from one members and that’s all.

I’m loving it. Be sure to read the rest, and his conclusion on the session.

Ahmad from Iraqi Expat has similar thoughts echoing Ali’s.

I know some people have criticized the National Assembly sessions as being choatic; but I loved it, members are criticizing the government, asking questions, debating, etc. What is not to love? It’s called democracy and they are learning it, like we are. I don’t want to see any council were everybody agrees on what the leader says, what’s the point of such useless council of parrots?

I am not worried – and you shouldn’t be – that Al Jaafari might turn Iraq into Iran, since he only has executive powers but no legislative powers; also his cabinet will have many seculars, Kurds and other minorities. I personally believe that Al Jaafari is a rational, moderate and tolerant Shia, even though he represents Al Da’awa Party which is a religious party. He is a well respected soft-spoken diplomat who might lack the charisma and the strength required for this period! But I might be proved wrong on this one.

I wish him and his cabinet the best of luck.

Keep your heads up everyone. The media’s been concocting fantasies because they don’t know how to report this resounding success.

UPDATE: Upon request I’m going to post a really old essay of mine regarding sectarianism in the United States, the issue of slavery and how our own Civil War was inevitable. Iraq doesn’t have the same problem of slavery the United States did at the time, so drawing comparisons are futile. While not mentioned in the essay, it is funny how in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence how Thomas Jefferson lumped foreign mercenaries and Scotsman into the same group. Strangely enough, it was the rowdy Scotsman and Irish who were causing quite a bit of unrest during the revolutionary period. Obviously, that was editted out so not to raise tensions. Now that was a good compromise.

From before the breaking of the Revolution through the first secession of the Union by South Carolina, the Civil War was completely inevitable despite any ideal compromise that could have been made. The cultures of the southern and northern states developed and grew almost immediately indistinguishable because of their radically different economies; both of which were factors that played key roles in the development of their respective political societies. The main reason that the United States was able to become a single nation during the Revolution with such differences, and maintain that status, occurred chiefly through the perpetuation of complimenting cultural and economic interests. The two main periods before the Civil War in which this took place was the revolution and the era of nationalism following the War of 1812; two periods that took place one shortly after the other. The degradation of lesser national to greater sectional similarities led to the period between 1840 and 1860 that resulted in many of the compromises created over the issue of slavery. These compromises solely inhibited the country from its inevitable schism, because no compromise at any point in America????????s history could have undone the rise of slavery as the southern economic base.

There is an age-old adage that states that one should ???????nip a problem in the bud??????? instead of waiting for it to grow in consequences. America????????s first President, George Washington, realized this as he became continually troubled by the growth of ???????the peculiar institution,??????? wishing to ???????never??????? possess another slave by purchase,??????? as well as to ???????see some plan adopted, by which slavery may be abolished in this country by law.??????? George Washington is something of a prophet in American history, warning against the dangers of slavery and political parties; strangely enough, the two things that tore the country to war. The problem of slavery, however, could not be nipped in the bud as George Washington hoped that it would. The American Revolution, because it was based on a unified cause for self-government, could not afford to be torn by sectional differences such as slavery ???????? not to mention alcohol, religion, and immigrants.

Thomas Jefferson realized this when drafting the Declaration of Independence. In his first draft, an entire passage existed that was removed from the final version condemning the slave trade. Though it was blamed on the King of Britain, stating, ???????He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation hither,??????? he makes the inaccurate notion that it was Britain who suppressed legislative attempts to squash slavery, saying, ???????Ädetermined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold,Å he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.??????? In fact, South Carolina and Georgia, two very important states then to the unification and future disunion of the country, had never made any attempt to ban the importation of slaves; wishing instead to continue it to a greater extent. Some northerners, while not owning many slaves themselves, did not take a moral stance on the issue at the time, given that they made a living off of the importation of slaves. Split issues of opinion could not be raised during the revolution if it was ever to receive the support it needed to succeed in unifying the states.

John Adams, another founding father of America, wrote a letter to Timothy Pickering in 1822 regarding this, ???????I have long wondered that the original draft had not been published. I suppose the reason is the vehement philippic against Negro slavery.??????? Early America was very concerned with the ability of the individual states to possess power, especially given that they had just waged a war to be ridden of a tyrant. The Articles of Confederation express this fear, as they afforded few powers to the federal government to appropriately operate. But even the 1787 adoption of the Constitution, which afforded an immense amount more power to the national government, did not outright ban slavery. Instead, it banned the importation of slaves at the much later date of 1808, when slavery was to become a less economically viable source of labor.

Most people, especially the founding fathers, assumed that slavery would die out after the importation ban. The main crop harvested by slaves was sugar, which by the late 1780s, was becoming less profitable to produce and thus hired workers were becoming the cheaper source of labor. The 1793 invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, however, forever changed this economic trend to one of dramatic need for slaves. The incredible profitability of cotton in conjunction with the Industrial Revolution made slaves the labor base of the southern economy, forever forging a cultural crack in America.

The south, due to its need for slaves, naturally ended up treating its slaves better than they had ever been treated before, allowing for the natural reproduction of more than 20 million slaves by the Civil War. Importation was no longer needed ???????? though smuggling supplemented the growth ???????? which began to finally arouse a moral outcry against the institution. The War of 1812 and the upsurge of nationalism afterward, however, stifled this movement in that people wanted a unified country. Because of this, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was reached, drawing a line at the 36???? 30???????? by which slave and free states were to be determined. This created a stalemate in the Senate so that neither the north nor the south could dominate in slavery legislation, thus allowing slavery to exist where it was needed without interference.

No major compromises were made for many years after this point until 1850 due to the high pitch of manifest destiny????????s voice growing out of the nationalism following the War of 1812. America was at its imperialistic best at this time, which resulted in the acquisition of many new territories including California, Texas, and Oregon territories. The nationalist theme dominated for more than thirty years because the acquisition of territory greatly added to the economic interests of both the north and south, and the ramifications of the addition of new territory did not come into effect until they applied for statehood much later. Slavery could obviously not have been abolished during this time, as the issue would have totally stifled the territorial and economic growth of the United States. It was simply out of the question, as even though there were some events testing the waters of secession ???????? such as Andrew Jackson versus South Carolina ???????? they were isolated events not relating to entire sections of the country.

The only time in American history where the issue of slavery came fully into view was during the period of time when territorial expansion had reached a point where the admittance of statehood had to be considered. The Missouri Compromise had created an easy way to accomplish this, and worked until 1850. The Compromise of 1850 was eventually adopted between the north and the south in Congress that admitted California as a free state, and allowed New Mexico to vote on whether to ban or allow slavery. Subsequently, the Kansas/Nebraska Act, or Compromise of 1854, allowed Kansas and Nebraska to choose whether or not they would allow slavery. This turned into a ???????Bloody Kansas??????? mess.

The need for national unity had eroded and sectional interests became a major issue by this time; otherwise, so many compromises wouldn????????t have been needed! This was mostly due to the cultural and economic differences of the north and south.

The north????????s agricultural society was based on wheat, which was harvested by a machine and thus slaves were not needed for labor. The main function of their economy became, however, based on industry and manufacturing, which revolved around free labor. The north had also recently undergone the Second Great Awakening, a profound religious movement among most of the nation, which contributed greatly to the moral steadfastness of the exponentially increasing abolitionist movement. Because the north did not need slavery in the first place, it was able to develop values that vehemently condemned the practice. The south, on the other hand, had for the past half century become completely dependant on slavery for the basis of its economy. Cotton was a very labor-intensive job, and that being so, slaves were and had always been the cheapest form of labor. This allowed the south to develop its aristocratic, agricultural culture in contrast to the north????????s industrial, more democratic one.

At this point in history, after the compromise of 1850, the Civil War was unpreventable, hence the actual bloodshed in Kansas over the disputed state constitution legalizing slavery. The south felt that it would eventually be outnumbered, as many of the new territories could not produce cotton, and thus would opt to be free states. The south would be outnumbered and forced to give up its culture and economy. It was because of this that many of the slave-owning states decided to secede when Republican President Lincoln was elected in 1860 and the states were swinging toward abolition. By this point in time, secession was completely inevitable.

When, then, could slavery have, if ever, been prevented from being the issue that physically divided the country? As evidenced, the best time to obliterate any problem is before it manifests itself into a force to be reckoned with. This was not possible, however, at the beginning of America, as it would have created among a few states a bout of controversy around the new federal government, one which hadn????????t been standing long and needed a general consent from all of the states on basic ideals to prevent another revolution. Because of this impossibility, a time quickly came when slavery became a profitable base of labor due to the cotton gin, and the window of opportunity closed to nip it in the bud.

Nearly 60 years passed between the signing of the Constitution and the era of compromises that led to disunion; enough time for three generations to witness the country developing into two unique and different core societies. Because the problem of slavery was able to manifest itself into a thriving economic and cultural force in the south before being dealt with, the only way to crush the ???????peculiar institution??????? was to destroy it by force. The impossibility to prevent war in the beginning and the undesirability to do so by the Compromise of 1850 led to the rising sectional conflicts of the north and south. The Civil War could never have been prevented.