Reality on the march...

...or, The good news from Iraq cannot be ignored.

Democracy is on the march by James S. Robbins at NRO.

Just when the conventional wisdom's pessimism about Iraq was peaking, a group of Iraqi oppositionists had a sudden attack of common sense. The Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP), the largest of the predominantly Sunni parties, along with a Sunni coalition group called the Conference of the People of Iraq, agreed to minor changes in the draft constitution that made it palatable enough for them to recommend a "yes" vote in Saturday's referendum. The deal makes the constitution easier to amend, and establishes a panel that will review the document to propose amendments and other alterations. Approval of the document now seems virtually assured, and with enough Sunni participation to give it national and international legitimacy.

Common sense came into play when the IIP and others paused to look at their alternatives. If the Sunnis who opposed the constitution managed to defeat it Saturday, Iraq would continue to be governed under the current administrative law, under which they have very little influence. If the constitution passed, they would be stuck with the new system and still have little power, not to mention insufficient moral authority to seek future changes. After all, one of the reasons they have found themselves in this fix in the first place was their misguided boycott of the January 2005 elections. After having secured a minimally acceptable deal, their best option was to sign onto the pro-constitution team and try to fix it after the election.

The last-minute deal is bad news for the remaining opposition groups. The Sunni-based Association of Muslim Scholars, which had been aligned with the IIP as recently as Saturday, denounced the agreement as politically naïve. The Victorious Army Group (Jeish al-Ta'eifa al-Mansoura) declared war on the IIP and stated that they would kill their members wherever they found them. In fact the IIP has already been targeted for its get-out-the-vote efforts — last August three election workers (then trying to drum up "no" votes) were brutally murdered in Mosul in broad daylight, their bodies dumped in a pile with their election materials.

The election workers were probably killed not by Sunni insurgents but by al Qaeda's foreign fighters, who are ideologically opposed to any voting whatsoever. They now find themselves in a difficult situation. Before this week they had been trying to convince or coerce Sunnis not to vote at all, even though most groups had already mobilized behind the "no" campaign. On October 5, Zarqawi's group issued a statement arguing that the vote count was rigged in advance, and any Sunni participation would simply "legitimize the oppression." (This is a step back from the earlier al Qaeda argument that anyone who voted was an apostate who would be killed. That talking point probably wasn't playing well.) Now the foreign fighters have to contend with a substantial number of "yes" voters in the Sunni areas, and the possibility that the constitution will pass in every Iraqi province. It is further evidence of the widening gap between al Qaeda's interests and those of the Sunnis on whom they depend for support and sanctuary.