Rich – I’m not really championing purity, nor am I pounding my keyboard (it’s more like a graceful, yet manly, tapping). My ideal solution given the state of play would be to punt. Craft a minimalist constitution with it agreed-upon that a lot of stuff can be dealt with later. They’ve been working on the British Constitution for a few centuries and they still haven’t written the darn thing down yet. Parliament can always craft Islamified laws if it wants later. It’s always a lot easier to put things into constitutions than it is to take them out. Gerecht’s points (as he made them on Meet the Press yesterday) are well-taken, and he (and you) certainly know what’s going on over there better than I. But I can’t shake the sensation that we’re getting rolled and the Iranians are cackling. Wasn’t one of the main arguments that Arabs used to attack America that we support repressive regimes while talking a big game about freedom and liberty? Acceding to an Islamist state seems like a walk in that direction. If it doesn’t turn out that way, boo-ya. I can certainly live with the Islamist language if it doesn’t reflect an Islamist reality. But I can’t bring myself to celebrate that language.

By the way, in response to some emailers, my support for women’s rights in Iraq isn’t some gitchy-goo theoretical thing. I think public policy arguments are very much on my side on the importance of liberating women for development. But my objection is the Islamist state part. The subjugation of women stems from that, as far as I’m concerned.

Also, the democracy stuff is secondary as far as I’m concerned as well. I would gladly see Iraq become liberal — i.e. rule of law, free expression, property rights etc — first and worry about the voting five years hence. Politically that’s not feasible but that’s where my preferences lie.