BBC (Monday): Iraqis agree draft constitution

[Jack Rabbit]

From the BBC Online
Dated Monday March 1

Iraqis agree draft constitution

A temporary constitution for Iraq has finally been agreed after days of talks by the country's interim leaders.
Members of Iraq's Governing Council overcame differences to compromise on issues such as Islamic law, the status of Kurdish areas and women's rights.
The draft charter will recognise Islam as one source of legislation rather than the only source, and give autonomy to the Kurdish minority for now.
It is expected to be signed by US administrator Paul Bremer on Wednesday.

Read more.

Let's see . . . the constitution of Iraq is to be approved and signed by an American colonial viceroy. What does this tell us?

[rockymountaindem]

1. Same thing happened in Japan.

Things have been ok with that constitution, but the midset of the Japanese people after the war was different than that of the Iraqis today. We'll just have to wait and see what happens July 1.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Response

The comparison of the present occupation Iraq with the occupation of Japan after World War II is a poor one. The war against Japan was fought for entirely different reasons than the war against Iraq; the occupation and rebuilding of Japan had completely different aims than that of Iraq.

Japan attacked US territory on December 7, 1941. At that time, Japan was actively attempting to dominate East Asia and the Pacific through military force.

There is no parallel with the above in the invasion of Iraq. Insofar as Saddam was a threat, he had been long before contained. There was no reason to believe that he possessed anything like the arsenal Bush and his aides claimed; Scott Ritter was willing to testify before Congress that almost all of Saddam's biochemical capability had been destroyed by the end of 1998, when inspectors left, and that by 2003 the shelf live of what remained had long since expired. Those rushing to war didn't want to hear that. In addition, claims of Iraq's attempts to rebuild any nuclear capability and claims of her associations with al Qaida were debunked long before the invasion.

The US went to war with Japan because she had to; Bush went to war with Iraq because he wanted to and lied about the reasons for doing so, since he didn't have a good one. During the build up to the war we were told that Iraq would shoulder the cost of her own reconstruction; in other words, Iraqi resources would be sold to western transnational corporations. The Iraqi Governing Council, which also wrote this interim constitution, exists to give legal veneer to such sales.

The purpose of rebuilding Japan after World War II was to provide for a peaceful and prosperous Japan that would not feel the need to threaten her neighbors in Asia and the Pacific. The purpose of invading and rebuilding Iraq is to enrich transnational corporations.

The invasion of Iraq had nothing to do with any desire to make the world safer (Saddam was no threat), nothing to with fighting terrorism (Saddam wasn't associated with terrorists) and nothing to do with bringing democracy to Iraq. Anyone who thinks that Bush -- who seized power in the US after losing an election, uses that power to remunerate his cronies and tramples on civil liberties -- has any more interest in promoting democracy overseas than he has in protecting democratic institutions in America is naive.

The invasion of Iraq was gunboat diplomacy with cruise missiles, not a defensive action by a nation under attack. The act was one of aggression and the true justifications must be found in that light. This was a resource war. When all is said and done, it is classical colonialism and nothing else.

The Iraqi Governing Council is nothing more than puppets for a colonial regime. Nothing done under its name can have any legitimacy. The IGC is responsible to Iraq's new colonial masters, not the Iraqi people.

We can hope that a post-Saddam will evolve into a democratic state. However, that can only be done by traveling a path mapped by the Iraqis themselves, not imposed on them by a foreign regime interested only in expropriating Iraq's wealth.

[htuttle]

2. They had to approve it...

...they didn't want to get sent to the Central African Republic.



....sorry. The news is just all blurring together for me today...