Federalism and Civil War September 12th, 2006 by Roy Berman

Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, speaker for the Iraqi parliament, is quoted by the Washington Post as saying:

The United States is a federated system and it is leading the world. But this was after the Civil War,” Mashhadani said. “So must we go through a civil war in order to achieve federalism?

Now, I was personally under the impression that the United States was in fact federal from the very beginning, and actually became significantly more centralized in governance following the Civil War, but then I didn’t study at Baghdad Medical College, which is of course renowned for its American History courses.

I guess he knows a lot that I don’t. For example, I also didn’t know that:

Jewish, Israelis and Zionists who are using Iraqi money and oil to frustrate the Islamic movement in Iraq and come with the agent and cheap project.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 12th, 2006 at 11:33 pm and is filed under Current Events, History, The Americas, The Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to 'Federalism and Civil War'

1. Joe Says: September 13th, 2006 at 12:19 am

   He probably meant “do we have to go through civil war to achieve stable federalism?” I say no: just look at Australia, Germany, Canada, Brazil, India and every other federal country that hasn’t had to.

   The question is whether a civil war will be needed to sort out the contradictions in the Iraqi federal system. I don’t think the Sunni-Shia-Kurd differences are quite comparable to the basic problems caused by having half of the nation dependent on slaves and the other half opposed to the very concept…

2. lirelou Says: September 18th, 2006 at 8:34 pm

   But then, there are the federal countries that have had to. Nigeria, Brazil, Mexico. Glad to see their politicians are as well read as our own.

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