Anne-Marie Slaughter at TPMCafe in favor of the rush to finish the Iraqi constitution:

I never thought I would take this position, particularly given what could be at stake for the women of Iraq, but I’m going to come down on the getting it done side. Let’s just remember, the compromises that our founding fathers made to get to a constitution – mediating between slave states and free states – included one that left slavery intact and defined each slave as worth only 3/5 of a person. Fred Kaplan has pointed to the many differences between the 18 century U.S. process and the 21 century Iraqi process, but a stark similarity remains: by agreeing on a set of principles as the ground rules for a national political process you give everyone involved a stake in trying to advance their interests through that process rather than through violence or secession. That is precisely what ordinary Iraqis, of any religion or tribe, have not had. And the sudden claim of the insurgents that the ‘jihad of word’ is akin to ‘jihad by sword’ and thus that their supporters should vote in the October referendum means that they are beginning to recognize that there is another field to play on that they cannot afford ignore.

ME: Exactly. For me, a big reason to rush to finish the constitution by an artificial deadline has always been without a deadline and us pushing it, nothing would ever happen in Iraq.