← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · il ragno
Thread ID: 10478 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2003-10-14
2003-10-14 13:31 | User Profile
[COLOR=Navy][B]A New Constitution — Coming Up! [/B] [/COLOR] JOE SOBRAN
September 30, 2003 The U.S. occupation of Iraq is getting seriously weird. The U.S. Government has served notice that the occupation won’t end until the Iraqis come up with a constitution, and Secretary of State Colin Powell thinks six months is a reasonable deadline. The Iraqis appointed to do the job say they’ll need at least a year.
A year? The U.S. Constitution was banged out in a couple of months in the summer of 1787. Of course conditions were somewhat different. The delegates to our Philadelphia convention were sent by the 13 states, not chosen by a foreign power, and they had plenty of experience to guide their steps.
It’s a little odd for an invading force to impose “self-government” on a conquered people. Self-government usually occurs when there are no foreigners specifying how it’s to be done.
The American specifications for Iraqi self-government include, according to the Washington Post, the following principles: “federalism, democracy, nonviolence, a respect for diversity, and a role for women.” Except for federalism, none of these principles is embodied in the U.S. Constitution, which is pretty much defunct anyway. The U.S. Government today is no more guided by the U.S. Constitution than the Unitarian Church is guided by the Book of Revelation, but the Iraqis will be expected to adhere to a constitution that hasn’t been written yet.
And why must a constitution be written? The two chief allies of the United States, Great Britain and Israel, don’t have written constitutions. The British Constitution can be changed by a simple majority vote in Parliament; the U.S. Constitution is supposed to be amended by a cumbersome ratification process, but can actually be changed by five votes in the U.S. Supreme Court.
You might say of our Constitution what Gandhi said of Western civilization: “I think it would be a wonderful idea.” Regardless, an Iraqi constitution modeled closely on our own wouldn’t meet the standards laid down for ending the occupation.
Democracy, nonviolence, diversity, women — this is the language of contemporary liberals, not the Founding Fathers, let alone Arab culture. And the Iraqis also have to cope with their own religious, ethnic, and tribal divisions. Good luck.
So much for the alleged conservatism of the Bush administration. The attempt to dictate the terms of a constitution for a foreign country with an alien culture smacks more of microwave cooking than of political wisdom. The Bush crowd knows little of American history and tradition, and even less of those of the Middle East.
Yet the administration is in effect choosing a new set of founding fathers for Iraq and ordering them to compose a constitution, pronto, with a gun to their heads. Is it any wonder that the world sees Americans as both naive and arrogant? And can this be the same George W. Bush who, during the 2000 presidential campaign, voiced a prudent conservative skepticism about nation-building abroad?
Overpowering Iraq was the easy part. Destruction is simple in principle and America is incomparable at achieving it. But it’s obvious that raw force has nothing to do with the ability to create and nurture viable institutions. The administration wasn’t content with smashing Saddam Hussein’s regime; it felt it must stick around and take responsibility for the aftermath for as long as it took. Now it expects to develop a new Iraqi political culture in six months.
The sheer economic cost of the occupation has already turned out to be staggering, far beyond the administration’s hopeful estimates. Just keeping the water and electricity flowing is a huge job. But transplanting Western-style governance, which is clumsy enough even at home, is more like irrigating the Sahara or heating Antarctica. If you’re ambitious enough to try it, you’d better not be in a big hurry.
Two years ago a war to end terrorism sounded futile enough. But to this Bush has now added what nobody would have predicted of him: goals that are downright utopian. He makes Woodrow Wilson at Versailles seem like a nuts-and-bolts man. He also inspires nostalgia for his father, who approached the 1991 Iraq war with sharply limited purposes — purposes so narrow that they only whetted the appetite of neoconservatives for a bigger and better war in the Middle East.
Unfortunately, those neoconservatives have been leading the younger Bush by the nose. We’re now learning what regime change really meant. And learning the hard way.
Joseph Sobran
2003-10-14 14:55 | User Profile
Do the neocons really believe what they say, or is it just sheep fodder? I think they do believe it. Of course it could be simply a justification for an occupation that never ends -- and was never intended to end.
2003-10-17 17:45 | User Profile
Germany is the example always given of how Americans turned an evil dictatorship into a democracy. You're much better informed on the subject than I am, but even I can see how stupid that is.
I don't believe in democracy any more. It's just an illusion the ruling class uses to justify its rule, and even if it were real it would be the last thing they would want for Iraq. But having shoved multiculturalism and feminism down our throats, they now think they can do it to the Iraqis. I hope they don't succeed.
2003-10-18 08:51 | User Profile
***>>>They have an agenda - World Domination. ***
No, their real agenda is to promote democracy, economic progress, and human rights. For instance, look at the democracies that exist in Egypt, in Kuwait, and Pakistan they support, or their most favoured trading partner, Red China.
***>>>They have utterly destroyed Germany. ***
What is that old saying about the Germans? Oh yes. "Of the Germans, every third man is a traitor."
2003-10-20 17:56 | User Profile
They have utterly destroyed Germany.
Make no mistake, they've done the same with the States. I was born at the tail end of the sixties, when the tikkun-olaming was already well underway, and yet I still don't recognize the land of my birth anymore. Day by day, the tide gets a little higher, yet, as the late Robert Frenz aptly put it, all seem to be busy rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
I know your feelings on "ugly Americanism" Leland and I share your frustration, but I hope you don't confuse the fact that the worst of these people are based here in America with Americans themselves, though at times it may seem that the whole population here has gone mad. Sure, we have our fair share of the "lets role" and "nook them Ay-rabs" types, along with their Jew-worshiping insane rapturists, but even they, along with the small proportion of awakened folks, are the victims of the same kosher crew of multi-kulti suspects as your people, though I will admit we did not have any of our womenfolk suffer rape and murder at the hands of the Red Army in 1945. However, our unleashed (and "unleashed" is truly the appropriate term) population of duskier peoples are rapidly closing the gap, (just pick up any newspaper, though you'll need to scan the small-print stories in the back) thanks to the same villians who utterly pulverized Germany and her people six decades ago. Though I don't believe in the concept, were reparations owed, I would dearly love to see them taken from the billions in tribute we American taxpayers send to Israel annually and have them spent revitalizing eastern Germany that suffered under commie mismanagement/kleptocracy during the cold war. At least that way we'd have some return on the investment.
"Of the Germans, every third man is a traitor."
I fear that the ratio is probably something like 8 out of 10 here.
2003-10-20 18:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Leland Gaunt]Of course I don't confuse "every american" with the idiot yahoo Lemmings. Every people has it's decent people - but in this time they have no chance of being heard. A man I would have followed through fire and Hell was Dr. william Pierce. If only all americans were like him.
I know how you feel. One is alienated to his own country. I experiance the same here. I still live in the apartment I inherited from my Grandmother. She moved here as an expelee in 1950. There were of course a lot of Reds here, but it was still white and German. I practicly grew up here, lived here during my school days, during my military service ect. And now this place is turning into the dumps over the years. Niggers moving in, Balkan Guypsies, Race traitors with their bastard-kids. The Kids playing outside in the courtyard scream around in all sorts of languages. You can smell the stench of their food when they grill on the porch and play loud music in the middle of the night. Trash and junk is laying around in the bushes. this place has turned into a filthy Ghetto. My wife wants me to give up the apartment and move away. I'm tempted to do it - but I dont feel like running and giving up the place where I grew up. I couldn't stand the thought that some foreign piece of shit will live in the room where my Great-Grandmother died, or cook in the kitchen where my Granny baked her oldfashioned christmas cookies. Our old neighbour across the hall died recently - she was a widow of a Stalingrad-Veteran who came home blind. Now the apartment has been given to some foreigners who speak broken German.
How I hate this time and age I have to live in. I curse the Jews and their proxys every day, that they did this to my Fatherland![/QUOTE]
Leland I must say I feel your pain! Much of the same is beginning to happen to Mother Russia! :crybaby: