Has the Iraq War Tipped---the wrong way?

Robert Reid reports

About 50 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq in July -- at least 16 in the past week. According to American military figures, insurgents attacked U.S. and coalition forces an average of 68 times a day during the month.

By comparison, the average daily rate of attacks for July last year was 47.

Juan Cole observes

Lets see. The rate of attacks for July 2005 was 68 per day.

In the past week alone, 16 dead.

The rate of attacks for July 2004 was 47 per day.

Three things may be concluded. The US just is not winning this war. The various tipping points, including the Jan. 30 elections, haven't actually caused the situation to "tip." And, we're not being told about very many of the 68 attacks per day.

And things don't look good for the Iraqi constitution

The danger, expressed by some Iraqi leaders, is that there is not enough time until Aug. 15 for the constitutional committee to resolve several contentious issues that are central to Iraq's identity. A flawed constitution, they say, could open the door to civil war.

Some of the trickiest issues involve the future of the Kurds, who predominate in the mountains of northern Iraq. The Kurds have enjoyed a wide degree of autonomy since the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and they are eager to preserve -- and even expand -- their prerogatives against what they view as a potentially predatory central government.

On Monday, Kurdish leaders said they were prepared to withdraw their support of an Iraqi charter if it does not satisfy their concerns on a range of difficult issues, including expanding the geographic breadth of their autonomy and reversing years of expulsions and ethnic killings in areas of Iraq that were formerly Kurdish.

"If the constitution does not respect the basic rights of the Kurdish people in Iraq, the Kurdish region will vote against the referendum," said Barham Salih, a senior Kurdish leader and Iraq's planning minister.

It is not an idle threat. Under the rules set up last year, the Iraqi constitution would fail if two-thirds of the voters in 3 of Iraq's 18 provinces vote against it in October -- and Kurds are a majority in exactly three provinces.

Among the other unresolved issues is the role of religion in public and political life. Some Shiite leaders want the country to be called the Iraqi Islamic Republic, and they want to designate Islam as the main source of the country's legislation. Some Kurdish and other secular Iraqi leaders want to make sure that such language is not used to strip women and others of their basic rights.

We started talking about the Kurds as the wild card here at MEJ a year ago.

It looks like things are tipping alright, no wonder the US seems to be about ready to turn Iraq over to Axis of Evil charter member Iran.