Being Female in the New Iraq |  |
Riverbend has some critical reading on the subject...what, exactly, does our New Iraq have in store for her?
Let’s keep in mind that she’s already lost her job because of fundamentalism. What freedom is she going to lose next?
It is not “OK” for the US to allow the religious nutjobs over there to set up any kind of stupid Sharia law system. It is utterly unacceptable to have these alternate, binding courts. Sure, apparently you can use this secondary court system only if there’s agreement. Exactly how does that happen? There are all kinds of intimidation that can be brought to bear.
Irshad Manji’s recent “The Trouble with Islam” delineates the treatment of Muslim women with distressing detail. Riverbend is becoming a casualty. What good have we done if we simply exchange one oppressor (Hussesin) for another (the anonymous mullah).
And yet, Ross, if the US is dedicated to truly allowing the Iraqi people to set their own course, that’s what we’d have to do.
Which would be an utterly and irredeemably terrible thing to let happen.
Posted by Johno on 01/16 at 04:01 PMI agree, Johno.
Iraq needs a representative democracy on the national level, and a constitution limiting the power of the government and separating religion and state. It also needs something like our electoral college (or maybe even something like Switzerland’s system) so that none of the various regions/tribes can take over.
Straight Democracy on a national level would create chaos even in the US. It would create civil war in Iraq.Posted by Kathy K on 01/16 at 09:03 PMMeant to say, I agree with your last sentence. I only agree with your first sentence in that I’m afraid we might be…
Posted by Kathy K on 01/16 at 09:05 PMKathy, I’m with you, I think. One of my main objections to going into Iraq has always been that a lack of careful planning will bite us in the ass. The guys in charge seem awfully complacent in assuming that libervading will automatically and naturally result in a free, equal, and functional society in the Western sense. In essence, they’re assuming the ball will bounce our way.
I sure hope that happens, but it might take more prodding and active meddling than we want. And that of course has its own dangers. One of the pitfalls of the Perle/Rumsfeld/Cheney agendas is that it opens up the possibility that the ball won’t bounce our way, and Iraq, once libervaded, will freely choose a course that results in a government either hostile to the US or/and which excludes core tenets of the American freedom model, like you list.
What then? Do we depose that government? Do we try to leverage massive changes from within? Do we let it be? Any one of these options involves reneging on a core tenet of our values, which in turn weakens our position.
Dammit, international diplomacy is hard!
Posted by on 01/17 at 02:38 PMWe faced a similar dilemna in Germany and Japan. We can enforce the creation of a liberal democracy without breaking all our principles - we are restraining the anti-democratic factions so we can create a government that reflects our values. And remember, democacy is only one of our values. Rule of law precludes the ascendancy of most of the things we don’t like.
It doesn’t matter so much if we do create a democratic soceity tha tlater disagrees with us - Germany’s opposition to the war does not mean we failed in nation building back after WWII. A religio-fascist dictatorship would be a failure - as a reborn fascist, or stalinist state in Germany would have been. And we’d be right to squelch that.
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