Off Course in Iraq Most of the Bush administration's justifications for invading Iraq have turned out to be wrong. But the one surviving argument for overthrowing Saddam Hussein has been an important one: it was a chance to bring freedom and equality to the citizens suffering under a brutal dictatorship. For those of us holding onto that hope, this week brought disheartening news on multiple fronts. Most chilling of all are the prospects for Iraqi women. As things now stand, their rights are about to be set back by nearly 50 years because of new family law provisions inserted into a draft of the constitution at the behest of the ruling Shiite religious parties. These would make Koranic law, called Shariah, the supreme authority on marriage, divorce and inheritance issues. Even secular women from Shiite families would be stripped of their right to choose their own husbands, inherit property on the same basis as men and seek court protection if their husbands tire of them and decide to declare them divorced. Less severe laws would be imposed on Sunni women, but only because the draft constitution also embraces the divisive idea of having separate systems of family law in the same country. That is not only offensive, but also impractical in a country where Sunnis and Shiites have been marrying each other for generations. Unless these draft provisions are radically revised, crucial personal freedoms that survived Saddam Hussein's tyranny are about to be lost under a democratic government sponsored and protected by the United States. Is this the kind of freedom President Bush claims is on the march in the Middle East? Is this the example America hopes Iraq will set for other states in the region? Is this the result that American soldiers, men and women, are sacrificing their lives for? Women are not the only ones facing big losses in the new Iraq. The Sunni minority continues to be treated with contempt and suspicion because it enjoyed a privileged position under the old Baathist dictatorship. It took considerable American pressure to get a fair share of Sunnis, as members and consultants, added to the committee working on the new constitution. Two of those appointed Sunnis were assassinated by insurgents this week, and yesterday the others temporarily suspended their participation, citing security concerns. In considering whether to put their lives on the line again, these Sunnis will not be encouraged by the latest destructive antics of Ahmad Chalabi, the former American favorite who is now a powerful deputy prime minister. Mr. Chalabi, who has long advocated barring even low-level former Baathists from official employment, has now succeeded in disrupting and discrediting the judicial tribunal preparing for the trial of Mr. Hussein. He is pressing for the dismissal of senior staff members, including a top judge, because of former Baathist associations. The single most crucial requirement for Mr. Hussein's trial is preserving the appearance of impartial justice in the name of the whole Iraqi nation. Mr. Chalabi's actions, which his nominal boss, Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, seems powerless to oppose, risk turning the proceedings into a tawdry spectacle of sectarian revenge, which would only fuel divisive and deadly hatreds. Mr. Bush owes Americans a better explanation for what his policies are producing in Iraq than tired exhortations to stay the course and irrelevant invocations of Al Qaeda and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Most days, the news from Iraq is dominated by suicide bombers and frightening scenes of carnage. Occasionally, the smoke clears for a day or two to reveal the underlying picture. That looks even scarier. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/21/opinion/21thu1.html?
Well, the "secret" justification, oil, is still not materializing either. But you can take pride in our successful mission to pour an incredible amount of money into the coffers of Halliburton.
Don't feed the troll (vlaurelio). It has been documented ad nauseum that Cheney's deferred compensation is independent of Halliburton's financial health. Cheney earned that money long ago, and is being paid incrementally. Halliburton's current business prospects have zero to do with those pre-arranged payments. The proceeds from his stock options are pledged to charity. There exists no financial incentive between Halliburton and Cheney. At this point the only people arguing against that are the kook fringe liberals who wouldn't understand how to finance a car, much less be able to understand deferred comp and stock options.
Once again, the liberals prove that they see and hear only what they want to believe, ignoring the facts.
Whoa, whoa whoa! I wanted this thread to be a discussion about the drafting of the new Iraq constitution. Please take your pissing match to another thread. Thanks in advance. Here's another article about the drafting process... Iraqi Constitution May Curb Women's Rights By EDWARD WONG BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 19 - A working draft of Iraq's new constitution would cede a strong role to Islamic law and could sharply curb women's rights, particularly in personal matters like divorce and family inheritance. The document's writers are also debating whether to drop or phase out a measure enshrined in the interim constitution, co-written last year by the Americans, requiring that women make up at least a quarter of the parliament. The draft of a chapter of the new constitution obtained by The New York Times on Tuesday guarantees equal rights for women as long as those rights do not "violate Shariah," or Koranic law. The Americans and secular Iraqis banished such explicit references to religious law from the interim constitution adopted early last year. The draft chapter, circulated discreetly in recent days, has ignited outrage among women's groups, which held a protest on Tuesday morning in downtown Baghdad at the square where a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down by American marines in April 2003. One of the critical passages is in Article 14 of the chapter, a sweeping measure that would require court cases dealing with matters like marriage, divorce and inheritance to be judged according to the law practiced by the family's sect or religion. Under that measure, Shiite women in Iraq, no matter what their age, generally could not marry without their families' permission. Under some interpretations of Shariah, men could attain a divorce simply by stating their intention three times in their wives' presence. Article 14 would replace a body of Iraqi law that has for decades been considered one of the most progressive in the Middle East in protecting the rights of women, giving them the freedom to choose a husband and requiring divorce cases to be decided by a judge. If adopted, the shift away from the more secular and egalitarian provisions of the interim constitution would be a major victory for Shiite clerics and religious politicians, who chafed at the Americans' insistence that Islam be designated in the interim constitution as just "a source" of legislation. Several writers of the new constitution say they intend, at the very least, to designate Islam as "a main source" of legislation. By rough count, nearly 200 women and men showed up in the fiery heat to hand out fliers and wave white banners in a throng of traffic. "We want to be equal to everybody - we want human rights for everybody," read one slogan. The demonstration came hours before two Sunni Arabs involved in writing the constitution were fatally shot near a Baghdad restaurant, threatening to throw the drafting process into turmoil. "We want a guarantee of women's rights in the new constitution," said Hannah Edwar, an organizer of the protest. "We're going to meet with the constitutional committee and make our thoughts known." A dozen women, some sheathed in full-length black robes, showed up to denounce Ms. Edwar's protest. They said they were followers of Moktada al-Sadr, the fundamentalist Shiite cleric who has led two rebellions against the Americans. American and Iraqi officials say that several draft chapters of the constitution are floating around Baghdad and that no final language has been agreed on. Changes can still be made before Aug. 15, the deadline for the National Assembly to approve a draft. Protests by women and relatively secular blocs on the constitutional committee, like the Kurds, may force Shiite members to tone down the religious language. "Some of the points regarding women's rights in this chapter are still to be reviewed," said Mariam Arayess, a religious Shiite on the committee. Ms. Arayess said she believed that the draft was the most recent working version, and that it had fairly generous provisions for equal rights. She is one of fewer than 10 women on the 71-member drafting committee. The chapter has 27 articles, most of which have relatively liberal provisions aimed at ensuring various civil rights. The first says that "all Iraqis are equal before the law" and that "equal opportunities are guaranteed for all citizens according to the law." The final article forbids censorship of the press. References to Islam and Shariah appear in a few places. One clause says Iraqis will enjoy all rights stated in "international treaties and conventions as long as they do not contradict Islam." Such language is accepted by many Iraqis, including moderates, who say Islam is a vital foundation for the country. But women's groups are incensed by Article 14, which would repeal a relatively liberal personal status law enacted in 1959 after the British-backed monarchy was overthrown by secular military officers. That law remained in effect through the decades of Mr. Hussein's rule. The law used Shariah to adjudicate personal and family matters, but did it in as secular a manner as possible, pulling together the most liberal interpretations of Koranic law from the main Shiite and Sunni sects and stitching them together into one code. Critics of the draft proposal say that in addition to restricting women's rights, it could also deepen the sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shiites. The draft also does not make clear what would happen in cases where the husband is from one sect and the wife from another. Religious Shiite politicians tried once before, in December 2003, to abolish the 1959 law. As is happening now, women's groups and secular female politicians took to the streets. Faced with the mini-rebellion, L. Paul Bremer III, then the effective American proconsul of Iraq, rebuffed the move, to the anger and dismay of many religious Shiites. "We don't want to use separate Sunni or Shiite laws," said Dohar Rouhi, president of the Association of Women Entrepreneurs. "We want a law that can be applied to everyone. We want justice for women." A Westerner familiar with the writing of the constitution said that when he saw a draft of the civil rights section less than a week ago, it did not contain the sweeping language on personal status law. In that version, he said, most measures - even those citing Shariah - were not as severe as they could have been. "Compared to what some of the conservative Shiites were pushing, the glass is half full," said the Westerner, who would speak only on condition of anonymity, because he did not want to appear to be interfering in a sovereign Iraqi process. He said there was some cause for alarm, though, pointing to a proposal to phase out a measure in the interim constitution requiring that a quarter of parliamentary seats go to women. Ms. Arayess, the Shiite drafter, said some of the writers were considering keeping the quota for the next two terms of the parliament before allowing it to lapse. After that, she said, women should be able to stand on their own. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/20/international/middleeast/20women.html
I hope that something can be done, and women have the opportunity to experience freedom in the new Iraq. I would certainly hate to think that things for women got worse after Saddam left.
If the majority of Iraqis want it this way, I am down with it. The Iraqis do not need the US to write any more of their constituition.
My feeling exactly. Like it or not, Iraqi women under Saddam's semi-socialist regime had the highest equality (relative to men) among all Middle East countries, except Israel.
Well, what did you expect? Wasn't that exactly the argument made by opponents of the whole "democratization" project? The majority of Iraqis are hardcore Shi'ites, and Shi'itism is very, very fundamentalist in its interpretation of the religion. Overall, the Kurds are the only group of Iraqis that are largely secular, including a good portion of the Sunnis. What's democracy again? Rule of the majority, that's what it boils down to. The US can't do anything about it, or otherwise it will be seen as interfering in Iraq's sovereignty and democracy. We all knew this was inevitable with a Shi'ite majority that takes its orders from the Grand Ayatollah, so I hope no one b****es and cries about it, every single Arab leader told the US as much, they didnt listen. Well, look on the brightside, at least Iraq and Iran (previously long time enemies) are now getting along just fine, and cooperation is being strengthened between the two countries. At this point to be very honest, the US wants nothing but the opportunity to create a semi-stable, popular government in IRaq that can take over its own security, hoping that we can bolt and leave the country ASAP. That's our only concern now, screw Iraqi civil rights or anything else. So deal with it.
I guess when both men and women are getting gassed, tortured, killed and buried in mass graves around the country by Saddam, then yeah, women would be considered to have equality with men....but only if he did it equally to both men and women...
