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Politics : Idea Of The Day -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: IQBAL LATIF who wrote (43957)	4/4/2003 1:37:50 AM
From: JD	Respond to of 50167

"A person is a human being regardless of nationality" Iraqi Man Risked All to Help Free American Soldier "Mohammed, a gregarious 32-year-old Iraqi lawyer, went by the hospital in Nasiriyah one day last week to visit his wife, who worked there as a nurse, when he noticed the ominous presence of security agents. Curious, he asked around, and a doctor friend told him an American soldier was being held there. Something made him want to go see. The doctor took him to a first-floor emergency wing where he pointed out the soldier through a glass interior window -- a young woman lying in a bed, bandaged and covered in a white blanket. Inside the room with her was an imposing Iraqi man, clad all in black. Mohammed watched as the man slapped the American woman with his open palm, then again with the back of his hand. In that instant, Mohammed recalled today, he resolved to do something..." washingtonpost.com A simple statement, but a far reaching principle: "A person is a human being regardless of nationality" Mohammed may have spoken the first 9 words of an Iraqi constitution: "A person is a human being, regardless of nationality" (or religion, political party, gender, race...). His thought is the key for any effort at self-governance in Iraq to succeed long term - each individual's "human" rights must be sacrosanct...a Constitutional Republic that is decentralized and representative in nature, with the government’s purpose strictly limited by the Constitution to the protection of individual rights ("human" rights & private property). Majority opinion should never be allowed to supersede the principles of individual liberty. Ike, I would love to hear your viewpoint on this; from the few bits & pieces of the Koran I have read since 9/11, the concept of individual liberty seems to be actively discouraged. And please don't look for help on this to come from the US....our government has been moving toward centralization and away from individual rights for many decades now. Mohammed's courage and compassion will be remembered for a long, long time. Jerry