A Country of Laws

Despite the passage of three new laws by the Iraqi Parliament, Iraq still remains a very divided place and now that our brilliant strategy of arming both parties in the civil conflict is about to explode in our faces, it is about to become a very dangerous place again. As our national history and the recorded history of many other countries can attest, nations are more than just laws. Nations are people, people with feelings and memories. These feelings and memories are not always subject to the ways of legal justice and have a way of causing people to implement laws in some unexpected ways. The Iraqi people are many years from national reconciliation and we are not even sure that they want it, the more we ride herd over the process and inject our own sensibilities into the process the more we prolong the day of reckoning.

Several legislators emphasized after the voting on Wednesday that achieving true sectarian reconciliation was far more complex than simply passing a law.

“Reconciliation will hang on more than a law, it needs political will,” said Mithal al-Alusi, a Sunni legislator. “I believe there is no political will to achieve reconciliation. The law of amnesty is good, but not enough.”[1]

The Iraqi government has no incentive to reconcile so long as we continue to play powerbroker not only in Iraq but in the region as a whole. As long as we continue to provide political coverage and cannon fodder the deeply held sectarian rifts will continue to acerbate under the surface. You cannot force people to like one another or to respect one another, that has to come from a common desire and goal for a people. I do not see that commonness of purpose for the Iraqis at this time.

While the laws put in place can lay the groundwork for change or reconciliation, they still require the trust of the people that they will be enforced in an equitable manner. There has to be an underlying trust within the people to submit to the laws on the books. Can we say that the Iraqis have this underlying trust in each other? I doubt it, we can’t even say with confidence that we have it in each other. Laws are merely the framework, the skeleton that holds the society together. If the people do not have a faith in those executing the laws, there can be no peace or any justice.

An example of this would be the Amnesty Law recently passed as part of the three new laws from the Iraqi Parliament, there are tens of thousands, mostly Sunnis that are being held without charges. The Amnesty Law was suppose to help ease the over-crowding and the appearance of revenge by the Shias, the problem of course is in the details. While the central government may have one definition of who the law would affect, you still have local and provincial officials who may have a different interpretation. Because of the central governments lack of any real power of enforcement the locals will still have the last word. How many of those tens of thousands of prisoners are there due to some local vendetta? The sheer numbers make it next to impossible to fully investigate each individual case, thus leaving many to rot in the jails and prisons of Iraq.

Thanks to our “surge” strategy we have increased the numbers of imprisoned to well past the breaking point. It seems we have not only exported democracy, but also our penchant for locking people up. It is also a documented fact that many of the Sunni detainees have been tortured and killed by their Shia guards. The Amnesty Law will do nothing to correct these injustices and only serves to reinforce in the mind of the minorities in Iraq their need to continue to fight the majority’s dominance.

While the passage of these laws will provide political cover for the Republicans and war mongers in America they will actually produce little in the way of reconciliation in Iraq. The current administration and the Bush-lite nominee waiting in the wings will state that this is a good sign that the Iraqi’s are making progress on the “benchmarks”, the true test is not in the laws we are forcing them to enact to meet our own political agendas, but in the trust created and developed by the opposing parties. This trust cannot be legislated or thrust upon them, but must be developed over time. If Iraq remains a sovereign nation in its current form, it will be up to the Iraqis to make this happen. It will not be at the behest of an occupying army, the history of the colonial powers should make this fact abundantly clear. The nations that they fashioned for their political expediency decades ago are still suffering from the tribal and secular fragmentation of trying to create nations from groups who do not share a national identity.

The war in Iraq will continue to define not Iraq’s but our national identity for years to come. Make no mistake about it the war in Iraq was not and is not about al Qaeda or terrorists, it is about one nation imposing its will over another nation. We can decorate that fact with the bouquet of spreading democracy and freedom, but the stench of imperialism will not be easily covered. How can a nation that violated international law now claim a moral superiority to bring law to the lawless? One must first remove the log that is in one’s own eye before trying to remove the splinter in another’s eye. Are there times when compassion and the acts of blood thirsty tyrants require action? Of course there are, we are confronted with them daily in Darfur, in Bosnia, and Rwanda. Iraq however was not one of them.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/world/middleeast/14iraq.html?pagewanted=2

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To Sag Or Not To Sag?

As more and more communities are creating ordinances in an attempt to ban the practice of “sagging”, I began to question my own feelings about the practice. As the parent of a young son, it is a topic that has become inescapable. It is a practice that I have never understood and found it to be foolish looking. I am reminded though that when I was a young man, I use to wear jeans that were completely patched. While adults at the time and many of my peers thought I looked ridiculous, I would not have changed them for the world. It was my way of saying “up yours” to everyone.

Sagging began in prison, where oversized uniforms were issued without belts to prevent suicide and their use as weapons. The style spread through rappers and music videos, from the ghetto to the suburbs and around the world.

Efforts to outlaw sagging in Virginia and statewide in Louisiana in 2004, failed, usually when opponents invoked a right to self-expression. But the latest legislative efforts have taken a different tack, drawing on indecency laws, and their success is inspiring lawmakers in other states.[1]

Today, I wear Brooks Brother suits and other assorted designer fashions. As I look back at my teenage years, I realize that I wore those jeans because I couldn’t afford to wear the fashions my contemporaries were wearing. So, instead of being angry and becoming a criminal and stealing I went the other way. I decided to create my own fashion statement. I went to an all-black high school and so my hippie inspired fashion statement was met with derision, but I didn’t care. Before long people stopped trying to clown me and began to accept me. My point was made; a fashion misfit could still be popular. I was elected class president for 3 years in a row. Secretly, being the class-clown and egotistical ass that I was, I reveled in the attention my fashions brought me.

I relate these years to say that while I find the sag to be personally distasteful, lacks any true sense of style, and is unimaginative, I would not support public laws banning it. I believe in that case the cure would be more dangerous than the disease. With so many of our freedoms being curtailed for our own protection, it is a slippery slope to begin to legislate fashion. With that being said I also understand that we set decency standards all the time for the public welfare, but growing up during the first mini-skirt and hot pants wave it would be hard for me to ban anything. I find the fashions of the young people today to be an extension of their culture, which seems to be bankrupt. Their music is pirated and sampled, their lyrics lack creativity, and their language is crude.

The advice I gave my son, is how I have been able to endure the current fashion trends. I told him simply that he could wear whatever he wanted so long as it did not interfere with his studies. You can look like a fool, but you’d better not be one. As soon as he began to slip in school, the gig is up. There would be no more hip-hop fashions and no more sagging. I explained to him that when trying to establish oneself, appearance is important. I told him that while it was unfortunate; the truth is that we are judged by how we look. I explained to him the Dave Chappell analogy of female fashions.

Dave said that if women wanted to stop being treated like “hoes” they should stop wearing the uniform. He said that if a car pulls up behind you with flashing lights and a guy gets out with a uniform, badge, and gun then you reasonably believe that he is a cop. You believe this because he is wearing the cop’s uniform, so whatever uniform you are wearing do not be surprised when you are treated like that character. In a perfect world it would not be this way, but this is not a perfect world. In a perfect world we would be judged by what was on the inside, not the outside; but this isn’t it.

I explained to him as a young black man he was already going to be stereotyped and that he would have to work very hard to overcome them. I told him that dressing in that way only added to the impression that he would have to overcome. I told him that if he wanted to take on the added weight that it was on him, but understand what you are getting into. People are going to judge you based on what you are wearing.

After going through my whole spiel, it turns out he is a skateboard enthusiast and isn’t even into the sag. So here it was I wasted a perfectly good father/son speech for nothing. I think what is missing from this dialog for the young black man is the presence of a father/mentor to explain the true consequences of their actions. Right now they are only getting one side of the story. They are getting the street side and it is not being tempered by any other voices. I am not saying that this would reduce the effects, because let’s face it youth will rebel. What it will do is give them an anchor, a fixed place to return to when the rebelliousness of youth runs its course.

I think to legislate will only cause them to rally around the cause and reinforce the us versus them mentality. What is needed is more voices in the discussion, voices of reason and concern. What we don’t need is voices of condemnation. In closing, I would like to lend my voice with the following to sag or not to sag is not the question; the question is? Are you taking care of your business regardless of how you look? It is one thing to look like a fool, it is quite another to be a fool.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/30/fashion/30baggy.html

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