Destruction Is What We Do Best

TECHNORATI TAGS: kangaroo court, banana republic, infrastructure, United States, Iraq, American military, public health, democracy, law

Steve Soto, about today's NYT article on Iraq's dysfunctional judicial system:

As with everything else we have botched in Iraq, the United States is bequeathing to Iraq what amounts to a kangaroo court system worthy of a banana republic. Sure, the bedwetting fighting keyboarders will say that any court system is better than the system of law that Saddam operated, but that isn't the case. A system that doesn't allow due process or legal representation, but which has the American imprimatur and is supported by the American military is the worst argument for democracy we can give to ordinary Iraqis.

We have obliterated their infrastructure, and failed to rebuild it; we have blown up their historical legacy and cast it to thieves and looters; we have destroyed their public health system and failed to rebuild it; and we have destroyed their security and left them to ethnic cleansing. And the best we can do is to leave them a court system like this, which treats women deplorably, as a sign of what they can reap from being "liberated"?