Christopher C. Rushlau (USA), 10 December 2003

on: The Arab World Has Its Own Models, by Sonja Hegassy

The choice given at the end of the article is a false dichotomy: internal means of remembrance or "should they rely on the experiences of the west?"

The first principle of law in "the west" is the right of the state to survive in order to defend the people. An example is the idea of martial law. Since post-medieval history in the world features European expansionism (despite its democratic and Christian protestations), the rest of the world is justified, by European standards, in putting all its efforts into self-defense, including sacrificing diversity for the sake of national power.
For a European to study Arab grief is to ignore the continuing infliction of new grief--new grievances--exemplified by the spectacularly illegal invasion of Iraq.

To turn to a principle of European law dealing with the relationship of the state and the individual's wellbeing, the idea would seem to be that, if the state wants to interfere in the individual's life, the interference must result in a net improvement in the individual's wellbeing. For example, if a child is removed from an "abusive" home, the child must receive better care after the removal than if the child had never been removed.

To combine these two principles in the Iraq case, to overcome the presumption favoring national integrity, the invasion must improve the people's wellbeing. This includes not just protection from mass-graves and torture but relief from nuclear blackmail by Israel, assurance of social services, and most of all an effective means of establishing a national consensus.

Since the US is so far opposed to allowing an international consensus to shape the reconstruction of Iraq, we cannot expect the US regime in Iraq to allow an Iraqi consensus to emerge: inappropriate means cannot be expected to produce the appropriate end any more than cooking beef over a fire can be expected to produce a chocolate cake.

So, to peer into this situation and speculate about how the Iraqi people can come to terms with their misery seems absolutely insensitive.
One might expect Germans, with their history of both absolutist regimes and US occupation to risk their political and economic capital on behalf of the occupied people of Iraq--rather than trying to ban headscarves in Bavaria classrooms. After all, the fundamental assumption of law is that people are reasonable: they appreciate justice and they remember injustice.

Christopher C. Rushlau