Iraqi Bill of Rights

Miscellaneous Current Events
1

From Stephen Kinsella’s blog:

Thank God! The draft of the Iraqi Bill of Rights just shows America is helping to spawn liberty in the mid-east. For example, the neo-con pro-Israeli hawks will no doubt love these provisision: “Any individual with another nationality (except for Israel) may obtain Iraqi nationality after a period of residency … An Iraqi may have more than one nationality as long as the nationality is not Israeli.”

Sheesh. Other choice provisions, which sound like they were written by the UN [Khawaja on Socialist Welfare Rights; The UN, International Law, and Nuclear Weapons]:

  • Social justice is the basis of building the society.
  • The state must … implant moral values ….
  • The state shall guarantee for women the appropriate services related to pregnancy, childbirth, and the period after childbirth and provide her free health services as well as adequate nutrition while she is pregnant and nursing.
  • Iraqi citizens have the right to enjoy security and free health care.
  • The state is responsible to support the provision of work opportunities for all qualified and pay monthly salaries for all unemployed for any reason until opportunities are provided in the case of disability, handicap, or illness until the malady ceases.
  • There is no tax or fee except by law [note: well, that’s a relief!]. The basis for taxes and public expenditures is social
    justice [oh, goody, better than some other … basis].
  • All natural resources and the [resulting] revenues are owned by the people. The state shall preserve them and invest them well. [Well, heck, we ought to just require American mutual funds to “invest well”. That would be a good idea, no?]
  • Citizens may not own, bear, buy, or sell weapons, except by a permit issued in accordance with law.
  • The state shall guarantee the realization of social and health insurance for the child from his birth until he completes his university studies.
  • The state shall guarantee the realization of the social guarantee necessary for citizens in case of old age, disease, inability to work, or if they are homeless, orphans, widowed, or unemployed. It shall provide them social insurance services and health care and protect them from the talons of ignorance, fear [shades of Woodrow Wilson!], and want, providing them with housing, and special programs to train them and care for them.
  • The state and regional governments shall combat illiteracy and provide their citizens with the right of free education at the various stages.
  • There is no censorship on newspapers, printing, publishing, advertising, or media [hey, this sounds alright!.. but wait: ] except by law. [uh oh]

I’m glad that all the spilled blood in Iraq has brought liberty to the Iraqi people. [/sarcasm]

2

This one tops them all! I like how it starts in the negative.

3

Uh oh.

Yeah, we have to show those non-Muslims, women, homosexuals, Muslims of different sects and children who’s boss!

And here I was thinking Iraq might actually be going somewhere.

There ain’t no such thing a a free lunch, whether your name is Malcolm, Menendez, Meiji, Matumbo or Muhammad.

Good luck funding that, with your country bombed to pieces.

What other possible basis other than law does a tax or fee have? Nice manners? The endorsement of Robert Downey Jr? Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s ratings? There’s the barfworthy “social justice” drivel again. I can see an Obama-era chain of thought in here.

You have got to be kidding me. This is straight out of the Soviet Union. Haven’t they heard of the calculation problem, the tragedy of the commons, or, hell, if empiricism floats your boat, the history of communism?

Yeah, there’s a real effective strategy to reduce violence in a country overrun by religious fundamentalists and guerilla groups. Disarm everybody, effetictively combining the military and the police.

And here I was thinking Muslims didn’t believe in Santa Claus. How the hell do they intend to fund this? Is oil production covered under the whole “All natural resources are owned by the people” schtick?

Oh come on Ahmed, no one is fooled by this “social” nonsense. I’d say this is less Wilson, and more straight out of a FDR speech.

Replacing madrassahs with government schools. There’s gotta be some first class irony there.

North friggin Korea could hold itself up to this standard. Typical internationalist document, provide a list of freedoms mixed with entitlements and then say the government can screw over the freedoms any time it wants.

4

“Oops. Iraq’d the economy.”

5

A bill of rights issued by any government is a contradiction of terms. It’s like the slaveowner signing and distributing a “Slaves Bill of Rights” to his slaves. He can promise them the moon in the damned Bill of Rights but whenever any provision in the BoR is in conflict with his current whims, it is meaningless.

This BoR is, of course, laughable, but it’s only laughable to Westerners… could the Iraqi gov’t really have written it differently and made it acceptable to the people of Iraq? I doubt it. But populist appeal is not a measure of the desire for human liberty. Iraqis (Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, etc.) each want to live their life as they see fit, that is, in accordance with their own worldview and religious beliefs just the same as every human being on this planet. By definition, no one wants to be coerced.

Clayton -

6

There’s nothing to worry about. I’m sure Christopher Hitchens will somehow be able to pass this off as justification for the Iraq War.

7

Not any more.

8

There’s a very telling scene in Black Rain where the old Japanese crime lord tells Michael Douglas “you came here and you crammed your values down our throats”. That’s one of my all time favorites.

The US and Europe see themselves as the epitome of social evolution and they see “nation building” as a sacred duty. The whole world must be rebuilt in their image: this means having well defined Nation-States, Social Security, gun control, democratic elections, an all-seeing bureaucracy etc. After the European powers were forced out of Africa they left behind a cadre of leaders that had been trained exactly to fashion an European system in Africa. The US has been doing the same, trying to spread democracy to the “oppressed”. The thought that our already deeply flawed system may be completely alien to a Pashtun shepherd or that a tribesmen may consider his family elders a much better authority than a US-style government hundreds of miles away is abhorrent. The thought that long-standing customs and laws may be better fitted to govern people than artificial democratic institutions is anathema.

The US in Iraq are trying to cram their own values down the throats of the local people. We may consider Islamic law and tribal traditions abhorrent but our institutions look the same to local people and we must not forget that like the French revolutionary armies enforced ordinances with their bayonets in occupied countries, so do the US armies in Iraq using mercenaries and warplanes. Is such a system more wont to be admired or hated?

9

The West has the superior system, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a good idea to stuff it down the throats of others. The British might have had no business being in India, but they built railroads and schools; the Mughals built overblown places to bury their wives.

10

The Mughals were foreign invaders and had no business being in India either. The West is dumb and always loses.

11

Thus why I had a George Galloway picture as my avatar a while ago. A socialist going against war is better then Christopher Hitchens (an ex socialist), especially in a debate.