The other day, Debbie Elliott
interviewed Sinan Antoon "a poet, novelist and filmmaker born in Iraq" on Iraq's new constitution. The short interview ends with Elliott asking,
Is there anything in here that clues you to think that maybe this document had not been written entirely by Iraqis?
Antoon replies,
Yes. What really raised the red flag for me was the article about how private property is sacrosanct. Private property is something that's acceptable, but the word sacrosanct, why all this emphasis on private property? Why not the rights of the individual are sacrosanct? And we must remember that one of the first laws that Bremer promulgated when he was the leader of the Iraq....was to open the country entirely for foreign investment and allow foreign companies to reinvest zero inside the country, meaning take all of the profit outside. So this emphasis that is sacrosanct is really telling, I think.
Property rights are important. What's telling is Antoon's ignorance and the NPR editorial decision to air the views of a poet on the constitution.
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