Promising Political Upheaval in Iraq

There's a new political coalition in Iraq, and it doesn't include the current prime minister. That's an unhoped-for blessing on top of the coalition's two other notable characteristics: it's a secular group including both Sunnis and Shia, and it includes a number of parties that previously joined al-Maliki's Dawa party in the Iranian-backed United Iraqi Alliance.

I say that al-Maliki's absence is an unhoped-for blessing not because I have anything against the man, but because it seems to me to provide evidence for the development of a real political culture in Iraq. After long years of infighting, majority and minority parties are learning to work together to use the political process to their benefit. It's too early by far, of course, but I might even go so far as to hope that the next election transfers power to a new party and a new prime minister. Because there as here, it's the political process that's most important, not the outcome of any one contest.