For the Iraqi police, its apparently Rodney King time! (I mean that the best sense of the term for those who have a sense of humor on the subject.)
Seriously - independent Iraqi accounts of the Iraq Police (IP) finally going to town on the bad guys.
Healing Iraq reporting the following:
some people armed with RPG's and AK-47's (apparently looters) surrounded e Adhamiya bank which was guarded by an IP and FPS force. The looters shouted to the police that they were here to attack the Americans so it was better for them to leave the area because they did not intend to harm them, nice trick. The IP responded by shooting at the looters, killing two of them and arresting six others. The disturbing bit was that the police dragged the dead looters and violently beat the others.
I'll admit that the last part doesn't disturb me all that much since that is what is often necessary in societies where basic law and order rests on a precipice.
Iraq can institute proper LAPD police procedures when their democracy settles in and violent thugs finally get the idea that the party is over.
The best report comes from Firas Georges who reports that Iraqi Police are rounding up criminals and sending them to.....guess where?.... Abu Ghriab prison!!!!
Money quote: "[Iraqi Police] arrested hundreds of criminals in many places of Baghdad and they are sending them to Abo Ghraib jail where nobody [will] set them free any more [simply] because...Arab reporters would say that Americans are arresting the Iraqi occupation resistance."
Even this Iraqi understands what a joke the Abu Ghriab story was.
Further quote: " These are IPs arresting Iraqi criminals whom we (Iraqis) know just when we look at them. That’s what would make the difference from now on."
Folks, I know some will rightly question police trampling on people's rights. But let's face an uncomfortable reality: Proper police procedure and restraint is the benefit of a stable, civil society. To first achieve a stable and civil society, you must first ask law enforcement to act closer to an army and round up the bad guys.
Lawyers and Miranda rights come after a democracy has been established - not during a struggling transition when there are so many forces wishing to destroy such dreams.
Perhaps there are libertarians out there who disagree on the issue of when/where to draw the line. I welcome any such dissent. But at the same time, I just had to give my own 2-cents here and not censor my true thoughts on the matter out of conern of what those who disagree might think.
An interesting chicken/egg problem--which comes first? The rights or the gov't to establish/protect them?
Posted by: Christopher Cross at July 2, 2004 12:11 AM (Permalink)Rights come first.
Then the Government to protect them.
Mark Steyn had a great article that discussed the difference between a nation with a government (US) and a government with a nation (USSR, EU).
Posted by: John at July 2, 2004 07:32 AM (Permalink)That's a nice theory, but it never works in practice. Even in the U.S., political independence preceded the Bill of Rights by a decade and a half, and it wasn't until the Twentieth Century that courts started interpreting those rights as broadly as they do today.
Posted by: Xrlq at July 2, 2004 08:39 AM (Permalink)Wouldn't it depend on the right at issue?
Posted by: Christopher Cross at July 2, 2004 10:33 AM (Permalink)The "chicken/egg" question as it relates to constitutional and civil rights in a democracy has long been an issue that I have been interested in. Debated this with several students when I was in law school.
I have always felt that it is not a working Constitution that makes us a civil society, but rather it is the fact that we are a civil society that makes a working Constitution.
If it were the former, then any backwards society could be magically cured by imposing "Constitutional Right" on their political/social system. I think there have been enough expiraments in the Third World to show that it doesn't quite work that way.
It should also serve a cautionary warning that our "rights" could evolve into irrelevence in the future if we do not get a handle on both our immigration/citizenship policies and vigorously teach each new generation traditional American civics.
Posted by: Justin Levine at July 2, 2004 11:43 AM (Permalink)I know it's not PC to hold this view, but I'm of the opinion that our constitutional government merely codified rights that its founders believed were theirs by right -- and which they believed would have been theirs even in a totalitarian regime (had such a thing been conceivable to them at the time). Dysfunctional government can prevent those rights from being enjoyed, but the only way to abolish the rights themselves is to make the people less than human.
And by that I don't mean "treat them as less than human until they themselves believe it." I mean alter their DNA and turn them into something not only mindless but soulless.
Someday there might even be a despot ambitious enough to try to do that -- but most would-be tyrants want to dominate people, not animals.
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