The Informationist

Iraqis or Iraq?

Preeta Bansal (a religious freedom activist) and Nina Shea (of Freedom House) contributed an important Op-Ed piece to this morning’s Washington Post, headed Iraq Must Avoid a Rollback of Rights.

As they describe the drafts of the pending “permanent Iraqi Constitution” now circulating, it eliminates all mention of international norms and obligations concerning human rights, instead limiting human rights to those consistent with sharia.

This characterization (assuming it’s true) poses a challenge for both the Bush Administration and its opponents, particularly those on the left.

For the administration, the challenge is to stand for its articulated principles. Will it hail a timely constitution that eviscerates the entire notion of liberalism and halt the Arab world’s tentative sampling of Enlightenment values? Or will it describe all such attempts as failures in need of further work? This question, more than anything else, will put to the test the promises of the President’s second inauguration speech. Will he, like his father before him, meekly accept the authoritatrian tendencies of nominally pro-American Arab leaders and governments? Or will he become the first world leader to ever stand for the rights of individual Arabs as individuals? The success of the entire push to reshape the Middle East hangs in the balance.

For the President’s critics, the challenge is no less stark. Bansal and Shea warn:

Now is not the time for the international community to take a hands-off approach, which it may be tempted to do by a false sense of cultural relativism and a misguided respect for a flawed “democratic” process that could, ultimately, lead to undemocratic results. The protection of freedom of thought, conscience, and religion or belief is not un-Islamic. Like all individuals, Muslims deserve and need the freedom to think and believe.

I have criticized the abdication of human rights by many of the administration’s most vociferous critics in the past, but this issue brings the matter to a head. For those out of power, the choice should be easy; after all, we’re basically armchair quarterbacks. But the choice is now stark: Do you care about Iraqis or about Iraq?

For those of us who aspire to real liberalism, the choice is easy. Iraqis are individuals, blessed with the same inalienable rights as are Americans (and all others). Iraq is an artificial administrative construct. Any attempt to deny individual Iraqi rights in the the name of Iraq is illegitimate, and any “government” to emerge as part of such a subversion of rights is illegitimate as well.

This question really is the whole ballgame in Iraq--and beyond. It’s one that all Americans (and all Westerners) must be prepared to answer:

Do individuals truly possess inalienable rights? And if so, what is the status of governments that subvert those rights in the name of a “higher purpose?”

Posted by Bruce Abramson from on 08/04 at 07:55 AM in Foreign Affairs and the World beyond Our Borders