As Iraqis Decide on Constitution, Reread This:

[Hissyspit]

Worth a read again, this posting from "The Rude Pundit" on August 29th of this year. Remember that if Iraqis adopt this constitution, that doesn't mean it's a GOOD constitution. I have not checked on what kind of changes have occurred to the constitution in the past month and a half - feel free, anyone, to analyze and check for applicable changes - but if nothing much was done about the emphasis on 'the one word,' adoption of this constitution will be just another episode in the history of authoritarianism and a continuation of the disaster that has been the "liberation of Iraq." (Note: Re DU copyright rules, I cut out the really funny, exceptionally rude and nasty second paragraph, so click the link!)

The One Word Death of Democracy in Iraq

It's strange that an enormous, almost ridiculously micromanaging document like the Iraqi draft constitution ought to come down to its use of a single word. And while one could easily say that the fact that the document begins with a shout-out to the "Sons of Mesopotamia" means women are shat on from the outset and that the line, "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam," means that Iraq will become mullahrific, it's a single word, used a couple of times in the entire constitution, that means Iraq is fucked.

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Article 17, Part 1 reads: "Each person has the right to personal privacy as long as it does not violate the rights of others or general morality." Article 36 says that freedoms of "expressing opinion by all means," "of press, publishing, media, and distribution," and "assembly and peaceful protest" are guaranteed "as long as it does not violate public order and morality." And in that one word, "morality," the hopes of a free and open and democratic Iraq are as dead as the soldiers falling there as this is written.

Let's re-state this: If you engage in personal, private activity that violates "general morality," you do not have the right to engage in it. Sweet Foucaultian nightmare scenarios. Homosexuality, judicious use of pleasure devices, adultery, pre-marital sex, even sexual positions in a married relationship can be banned because it violates what might be considered "general morality." And, since the Constitution says that Islam rules, forget about anal sex, with oral sex and masturbation up for debate. So if you like your husband to fuck you in the ass and you happen to mention it to some of the women at the market and they tell the local authorities, you can pretty much expect a home visit from club-wielding governmental holy thugs.

- snip -

This doesn't even address whose morality will be followed: a national moral code? A regional one? A town by village code? Will there be shariah cops, like in Saudi Arabia? In the end, banning offenses to "morality" means, simply, "we own you." Quite a democratic document there, even if it only succeeds in starting a civil war, plunging the region into chaos. Yep, it's worth a few thousand more lives to make sure morality is enforced, right? And, loaded as it is, the Rude Pundit keeps thinking about another single word: immoral.

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