A certain question divides world opinion. There are people who believe in equal rights before the law, and people who believe there ought to be different kinds of laws for different kinds people. People in cosmopolitan, modern nations like America tend to be of the first opinion. People in unfree societies spend a lot of time, because their lives depend on it, trying to bolster up their side in a zero-sum game, and hiding from gunmen if their side falls out of power. It's cultural.
The responsibility for the mess in Iraq is precisely a compromised regime of equal rights and the culture of the Iraqi people themselves who are unused to anything but monarchy. Once upon a time, America and other nations were committed to help fight the second opinion's violent power in that country. Today, not so much. I hear that we are sending about 300 advisors into a population of 32 millions.
The rule of law in Iraq and other 'crappy governments' (c.f. Cobb : Honor Killing & The Innocence of Muslims) is established in bloody spurts by sectarian groups, the militant ends are merely the tips of spears that would always be pointing at each other. Many wags say that this hostility is 1000 years old and America (and other civilized nations) ought to be ashamed to think that it can be solved. They are half right depending upon the racist content of the conclusion. There can be no denying that Sunni and Shi'ites, Arabs and Kurds are at each other's throats. But we dropped atomic bombs on Japan, and they are our friends only 50 years later.
The United Nations is called United Nations, not United Humans because in the context of an equivalency of civil rights (misnomered 'human rights') the world needs to be organized into Nations. Iraq has a civil rights problem and fell and will continue to fall into civil war because all of its minorities believe other minorities are not worthy of life and liberty under one law. Saddam could only enforce 'national' unity in exactly the same way Hitler did, by militarizing society and drawing the people into war - 9 years against Iran, America's old foe, in brutal genocide against the Kurds and subsequently against Kuwait, America's friend.
America, and every other nation on the planet needs peoples to be organized into nations. It is the unquestioned evolution of human organization. These nations require a singular constitutional law defending the civil rights of all its citizens and non-violent and frequent transfers of power. Any other arrangement will lead to sectarian disrespect and hostility.
This is key to the matter of terrorism because a state where the equivalent of political parties operate with violent impunity, aiming only to sustain the ambit of their authority, establishes a permanent state of corruption. Here we called it the Mafia. Whose civil rights are respected when the Mob is controlling things? Nobody's. We have become accustomed to the image of young fools brandishing weapons in their pickup truck patrols. ISIS in Iraq, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Haqqani Network in Afghanistan, C14 in Ukraine. None of these are nation-builders. They are native catalysts of chaos and destruction.
Whether you agree or disagree that America or any nation should assist in establishing the rule of law, civil rights and liberty for any people, you must understand people that don't have that will hate their neighbors and the only power they will respect is power. That's human behavior. Sectarian conflict is primitive, period. Those invested in such arrangements are always to be blamed for their failures to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty.
I personally believe with all my heart and soul that no person on this earth should not belong to a nation so dedicated and so consecrated. No one who believes in the brotherhood of mankind should believe otherwise. I understand that the price of evolution from sectarian rule and dictatorship is alwaysblood and treasure. So no matter how clumsy, any genuine effort to establish such rule of law and nationhood is a moral imperative of civilized countries with the wherewithal and courage required. Any backing away from such efforts is the co-signature of human misery.
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