Iraq has history of democratic elections

[struggle4progress]

Votes held under rule of British suffered from similar problems to now

Associated Press
Originally published January 30, 2005

CAIRO, Egypt - The elections were dominated by calls for a boycott, religious edicts prohibiting voting and accusations of foreign meddling, including by a dominating superpower. But this wasn't just Iraq over the last few weeks - it was Iraq from the 1920s to 1958 as well. <snip>

"Once there were elections, the British tried to get the governments that they would like," said Nasr. "That ended up completely destroying democracy in Iraq."

Britain gained control of Iraq from the Ottoman Empire in World War I, but limited resources and a violent Iraqi revolt in 1920 eventually prodded London into allowing the League of Nations to grant Iraq independence in 1932, though Britain retained de facto control over the country. <snip>

Eventually the facade cracked. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Iraqi communist and social democratic parties accused the government of "having a fake democracy," Bashkin said. <snip>

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.iraqhistory30jan30,1,202706.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

[punpirate]

1. Bush has surrounded himself...

... with like-minded people. With his indifference to history, there's no wonder the rest of his administration follows suit.

[Warpy]

2. That region has an amazing history

They had the rule of law, artists, mathematicians, scholars, and responsible government when most of our ancestors in Europe were painting themselves blue and hitting each over the head with clubs.

This arrogance of the US government is astonsihing, given that context.

[patdem]

3. Yes, Hammurabi is the VERY first LAW ...and we get to trash Babylon

why? Cause we are an incredible 250 years old? :grr:

was the ruler who chiefly established the greatness of Babylon, the world's first metropolis. Many relics of Hammurabi's reign (<1795-1750 BC>) have been preserved, and today we can study this remarkable King....as a wise law-giver in his celebrated code. . .

y far the most remarkable of the Hammurabi records is his code of laws, the earliest-known example of a ruler proclaiming publicly to his people an entire body of laws, arranged in orderly groups, so that all men might read and know what was required of them. The code was carved upon a black stone monument, eight feet high, and clearly intended to be reared in public view. This noted stone was found in the year 1901, not in Babylon, but in a city of the Persian mountains, to which some later conqueror must have carried it in triumph. It begins and ends with addresses to the gods. Even a law code was in those days regarded as a subject for prayer, though the prayers here are chiefly cursings of whoever shall neglect or destroy the law.
The code then regulates in clear and definite strokes the organization of society. The judge who blunders in a law case is to be expelled from his judgeship forever, and heavily fined. The witness who testifies falsely is to be slain. Indeed, all the heavier crimes are made punishable with death. Even if a man builds a house badly, and it falls and kills the owner, the builder is to be slain. If the owner's son was killed, then the builder's son is slain. We can see where the Hebrews learned their law of "an eye for an eye." These grim retaliatory punishments take no note of excuses or explanations, but only of the fact--with one striking exception. An accused person was allowed to cast himself into "the river," the Euphrates. Apparently the art of swimming was unknown; for if the current bore him to the shore alive he was declared innocent, if he drowned he was guilty. So we learn that faith in the justice of the ruling gods was already firmly, though somewhat childishly, established in the minds of men.
Yet even with this earliest set of laws, as with most things Babylonian, we find ourselves dealing with the end of things rather than the beginnings. Hammurabi's code was not really the earliest. The preceding sets of laws have disappeared, but we have found several traces of them, and Hammurabi's own code clearly implies their existence. He is but reorganizing a legal system long established.

[struggle4progress]

4. Hammurabi, the exalted prince who made great the name of Babylon, ...

... has words from the other side of death for Donald Rumsfeld

By Ariel Dorfman

I bite my tongue and try not to curse you
I bite my tongue and try not to wish upon you
what you visited on me and mine

my voice that ordered laws
to be engraved for all to see and hear
orphans and widows
no no do not place that curse upon him they say to me
they say to Hammurabi the protecting King
those who accompany me in the green dark of death
that is not what we do in the green dark of death

my code
even slaves had rights
even women cast out by their husbands
adopted sons prostitutes patients
even the oxen in the fields
builders barbers sailors
they all had rights
even the oxen in the fields
<snip>

You could have stopped this
Rumsfeld Lord of the Looters
Lord of the Black Dawn
<much more>

http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/resources_files/Hammurabi_WORDS_FROM_THE_OTHER_SIDE_OF_DEATH_FOR_DONALD_RUMSFELD.htm