The stated purpose for the Iraq war became the promotion of democracy (once WMD was shown to be a canard.)
Now we will be complicit in setting up a system that will deny basic democratic rights to 60% of the Iraqi population.
From:
"The drafts released last weekend are a cause for deepest concern. Written by a committe of 46 men and nine women, they expressly state that the main source of legislation in the new Iraqi constitution is to be sharia law, which will take precedence over international law. Sharia law decrees that “personal status” (that is, family law relating to marriage, divorce, custody, widowhood and inheritance) is to be determined according to the different religious sects.
Depriving women of their long-held rights and rendering them subservient to interpretations of Islamic law could well lead to the “Talibanisation” of Iraq and an escalation of violence towards women who rebel. Indeed extremists and insurgents are already using rape, acid attacks and violence to force women to wear the veil. Now a law is set to be passed that will ban widows from working for three months following the deaths of their husbands.
These developments have caused deep dismay among women’s organisations across Iraq, whether Kurds, Sunnis or Shias. Iraqi women have campaigned and lobbied hard over the past few months, often risking great personal danger - several politically active women have been assassinated, abducted, raped or threatened - for the new constitution to guarantee women’s rights and abide by international treaties.
What can be done to ensure that women’s voices are heard? Conferences, workshops, rallies and seminars seem to have no effect. At a meeting in Jordan only three weeks ago, at an undisclosed location for reasons of security, men and women from the Constitutional Drafting Committee and the Transitional Assembly vigorously discussed the issue of women’s rights. But already it seemed clear that it would be impossible to arrive at any consensus by the August 15 deadline, whether about women’s rights, or about federalism, the place of international conventions, or such basic principles as the right to life. "
Should the US and UK be complicit in this enormity?
Saudi Arabia is one of the closest allies of the US.
They don’t have democracy (no opposition parties) and women can’t even drive cars. Gays are imprisoned and flogged. Many of the 9/11 hijackers came from there.
‘The resulting Constitutional Government is radically different from Western style social order. Article 1 of the Basic Law of Government stipulates that “God’s Book and the Sunnah” are the substantive constitution of Saudi Arabia, being only amended (not changed) by reforms of state organization. Saudi Arabian monarchy is religion bound. Furthermore, the new Consultative Council (Shura Council, Majlis al-Shura) is subject to nomination and re-nomation by the king, not to election by the people.’
‘On or about March 26, a Jeddah court, meeting in a secret closed session in which defense attorneys were excluded, sentenced 31 of the men to prison for six months to one year, and to 200 lashes each, for unreported offenses. Four other men received two years’ imprisonment and 2,000 lashes.’
‘Saudi Arabia is to gender what apartheid South Africa was to race. In public life a woman is almost entirely segregated from men: excluded from the workplace, penned in special “family sections” in restaurants, taught in separate schools and colleges, and forbidden to drive
Under the country’s fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, her husband may marry up to four times but an adulterous woman faces death by stoning. Outside the home she must wear the abaya, a black gown which enshrouds her completely, except for a slit for the eyes.’
Saudi Arabia is one of the closest allies of the US.
Personally, I don’t see that the idea of setting up a government and leaving is going to accomplish much good. A country which is used to a dictatorial government has, I believe, in every instance ended up back as a dictatorship. (Chile, maybe, as the exception? And if so, only after a really long time.)
Without overseeing the government and schooling for at least a generation (twenty years)–particularly the military–and rewarding people based on individual worth instead of bribery or connections, I doubt much forward progress will occur just because of the format of the government.
The desire to end the occupation and get the troops out of there as quick as possible is probably going to ruin the one good thing that could have come about from the war (except maybe military positioning since I assume we’ll leave some bases.)
Agreed that Saudi Arabia is an affront to all democratic values, but our governments and armed forces did not bring the regime into being. They have sovereignty and can do with it what they will.
However, it will be claimed that the government left behind by the coalition of the stupid will be ‘better’ than that of Saddam Hussein. Under Hussein, women had full legal rights; these will be removed by the successor state to our illegal occupation. We will be responsible for setting up a state that denies basic rights to all women.
So I would propose that any War Supporter who claims that we are ‘bringing democracy’ to Iraq should immediately be confronted with this affront to women’s democratic rights. Sage Rat
Maybe Bush will restate the ‘cause of war’ as ‘oil and arms’ rather than the bringing of democracy. I don’t believe the latter claim can reasonably be made now.
Some of us were saying this very thing- it was about military hegemony and oil in the Middle East- from the very beginning.
So thousands have died (Coalition and Iraqis) purely to provide military bases and oil to the West.
I always believed the cause (for Bush) to be finding a quick and easy scapegoat since he couldn’t find Bin Laden. But that’s neither here nor there. I don’t think the 20 year policy has been discounted because he doesn’t want democracy, or is only there for oil. Rather, I don’t think that the American public would be open to a 20 year occupation and Bush in particular wouldn’t be a good enough salesman to even bring the idea forward. Half the country would scoff him just because he’s George W. Bush.
Well to be honest… how do you balance over-influencing the Iraqi goverment versus trying to establish a bona fide government ?
If the US with a heavy hand changes Iraqi laws and customs they will be even more the villain. Not doing anything about it at least makes the new Iraqi government seem more independent.
I agree this is far from establishing a democracy… if at all… but Bush can’t afford to make a democracy in Iraq right now.
How about we just return that Saddam Hussein dude to power? Is an Iraq with Sharia law going to be in any shape way fashion or form an improvement for anyone but the Shiite fundies and the direct personal enemies of Saddam Hussein?
The point is that for 60% of the population their rights are going to be considerably WORSE than they were under Saddam Hussein. Dreadful tyranny his regime may have been, but it did respect the civil rights of women.
But the main point is that the war was fought under a series of false pretences and the latest developments in the Iraqi Constitutional Convention show that any attempt by Bush to hide behind ‘introducing western democratic values’ should be seen as so much bullshit. They seem to be headed towards a theocratic gynophobic state.
Well, when they weren’t being raped, tortured or murdered of course.
I don’t know. It seems to me that the meaning of the word ‘democracy’ is what the majority of the people in the nation in question want…not what folks in another country think is best for them. As distasteful as I find the Sharia Laws I don’t think its really up to the US to decide what system the Iraqi’s finally choose. If they want religious laws to trump other laws, if they want to keep women down or in their ‘place’, well…thats their concern I suppose. Again, I personally find such things distasteful in the extreme, and I think the attempt to put women down or back into some male dominated ‘place’ is short sighted and flat out stupid…but then I don’t live in Iraq and am not a Muslim either. Perhaps the folks of the ME need to take a step back to eventually move forward. Maybe they need to get the whole fundamentalist Islam out of their system. You can tell someone fire is hot and that it will burn them if they stick their hand into it, but really until they actually do it they won’t believe you.
I think we are just going to have to let them do their own thing in their own way…and live with the consequences. I just hope its really the will of the people and not the group with the most guns or that are simply the most ruthless that wins out.
Main Entry: enor·mi·ty
Pronunciation: i-'nor-m&-tE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -ties
1 : an outrageous, improper, vicious, or immoral act <the enormities of state power – Susan Sontag> <other enormities too juvenile to mention – Richard Freedman>
2 : the quality or state of being immoderate, monstrous, or outrageous; especially : great wickedness <the enormity of the crimes committed during the Third Reich – G. A. Craig>
3 : the quality or state of being huge : IMMENSITY
4 : a quality of momentous importance
usage Enormity, some people insist, is improperly used to denote large size. They insist on enormousness for this meaning, and would limit enormity to the meaning “great wickedness.” Those who urge such a limitation may not recognize the subtlety with which enormity is actually used. It regularly denotes a considerable departure from the expected or normal <they awakened; they sat up; and then the enormity of their situation burst upon them. “How did the fire start?” – John Steinbeck>. When used to denote large size, either literal or figurative, it usually suggests something so large as to seem overwhelming <no intermediate zone of study. Either the enormity of the desert or the sight of a tiny flower – Paul Theroux> <the enormity of the task of teachers in slum schools – J. B. Conant> and may even be used to suggest both great size and deviation from morality <the enormity of existing stockpiles of atomic weapons – New Republic>. It can also emphasize the momentousness of what has happened <the sombre enormity of the Russian Revolution – George Steiner> or of its consequences <perceived as no one in the family could the enormity of the misfortune – E. L. Doctorow>.
When you say “Iraqi’s” do you mean “Iraqi men” or “all Iraqi’s”?
Saying “Well… If they want an oppressive system that disenfranchizes women, that’s fine” seems absurd to me, because the the whole point of being disenfranchized is that disenfranchized group doesn’t have a say. Given that women make up 60% of the country but only 16% of the constitutional committee, I think it’s pretty fair to say that they’re being disenfranchized.
If the Iraqi constitution delegates women to an subserviant role, and the constitution is approved by a majority of Iraqi’s in a coercion-free vote, then Iraq will not be a democracy.
Oh, come now. I’m sure the current administration will somehow be able to control its outrage at the oppression of women in this instance. After all, isn’t everything going perfectly, just as Fearless Leader and all his Fearless Followers said it would?
