Contrary to current belief, the American system of representative democracy would be the perfect model for Iraq, with only a small amount of fine tuning. There is good news here, possibly. The fact that Iraq is a multi-ethnic country could be a harbinger for true freedom, of majority rule with minority rights respected by law, and even allowances made for representation and participation. It doesn't necessarily have to be a harbinger for civil war, disruption, chaos, and an eventual Shi'ite domination over the minority Kurds, Sunnis, and others.
Hopefully, the nation will adopt a Bill Of Rights, guaranteeing freedom of speech, assembly, the press, and religion. And other legal rights guaranteed for all. Once this is established, it would be a simple enough matter to carve the nation up into a series of states, each with it's own equal number of Senators, and a House of Representatives commensurate with each individual states population. Some of these states will ofcourse be Sunni, others Shi'ite, still others Kurdish, and there should even be a state that is predominantly Assyrrian, and one more that is Chaldaean, or one that is a combination of both. There may be states with a mix of ethnicities, two or more, with none marking a clear majority. Such a state as this might prove to be the model of how well the future Iraqi State might function-or fall apart at the seams.
Whatever the case, the U.S. model might well be the only prospect for the survival and success of the future Iraqi State, and the only thing that might keep it from eventually descending into civil war, with an ultimate return to a tyrannical Ba'athist regime-or what could even prove worse, a Shi'ite (or for that matter Sunni dominated Islamic fundamentalist theocracy.
