In Iraq, they are now talking about a man called Yousef al-Haboubi who looks more like a miracle in people's eyes. At the recent local elections there, he won enough votes to get five seats in Parliament. Yet, he disappeared after the results were announced because he received a death threat. Why a death threat? Because he ran in the elections in Karbala not as a Shiite, a Sunni or a Kurdish, but only as an Iraqi. He said he was loyal to no sectarian group but just to Iraq as a country, adding that he considered the Iraqi people as citizens regardless of their religion, confession or color. When he decided to run in the elections, he did not know that he was running counter to the Iraqi Constitution, which has been adopted by the occupying forces there. In Iraq, at the moment, there is something more dangerous than US forces. These forces will sooner or later leave or indeed flee the country, as no occupation can last. The real catastrophe, though, is the Constitution, as it acknowledges sectarianism and consolidates the country's division. The strange thing is that this kind of constitution has been introduced by the US administration. Yet, this administration knew, more than anyone else, that what has really created the American dream is the Constitution as set out by the Founding Fathers of the United States. It is this constitution, with its balances and extreme precision, which regulates the relation between the different authorities there. Before the current US Constitution was introduced, the US society was made up of slaves and was full of all kinds of social and political diseases, while servitude was the dominating convention among the people. Indeed, it was a society with no future or even present. When the Constitution was introduced, though, the real American dream was born and it has been embodied day after day by the unique relation between the three powers and between them and the president. This US vitality was possible only thanks to this constitution, which created a dream which is still evident every moment. Such concepts, though, were totally forgotten when the Iraqi Constitution was thrashed out. It was decided that the president would be Kurdish, the prime minister a Shiite and the speaker of parliament a Sunni. Instead of working together in one single direction, though, these three authorities started to act against each other while relying on the Constitution itself. Look at Lebanon. The president is a Christian, the prime minister a Sunni and the speaker of parliament a Shiite. Yet, this formula has never been successful, as the country was ravaged by civil war for 15 years and has been living amid continuous tension. Indeed, it looks like a country made up of scattered pieces rather than one single coherent block. Obama's arrival at the White House was like an old dream coming true. Yet, the dream had already been embodied by the Constitution. On the contrary, a quick look at Iraq's map and the results of the elections undoubtedly show that the occupation's constitution has buried the dream instead of making it. The only hope is that a new constitution will come which will put the Iraqi dream in its natural place, between two emerging dreams, one in Ankara and the other in Tehran. Mr. el-Haboubi has shown how the occupation's constitution is totally false.
