I grew up watching cartoons like Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes, and I have got to say that the current Iraqi Judicial system is more whacky and zaney than anything I’ve seen on TV. A fundamental necessity for stability in Iraq is for them to establish a bias-free judicial system that punishes Shiites and Sunnis equally. According to THIS article in the Washington Post, they are about as bias-free as Fox News. Two high-ranking Shiite government officials were charged with kidnapping and killing many Sunnis. The US and Iraqi prosecutors put together a case with many witnesses in an effort to bring the defendants to trial. It was a miracle the case was even heard in court, after Iraqi’s Shiite Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki allowed the case to be heard. The case charged that ambulances and hospitals had been used to round up, torture, and kill Sunni patients, among other accusations. One judge from the panel was thrown off the case after reportedly promising to find the defendants not-guilty. The prosecutors had to try several times to get the case heard by the panel, after several failed attempts when the defense attorneys convinced judges there was insufficient evidence. US officials have reported that the panel must be holding these defendants to a different measure of “reasonable doubt” than Sunni defendants. “This shows that the judicial system in Iraq is horribly broken,” said a U.S. legal adviser who spoke anonymously because he couldn’t discuss the case. “And it sends a terrible signal: If you are Shia, then no worries; you can do whatever you want and nothing is going to happen to you.” The point I’d like to make is, we find this case illogical and completely ridiculous. But, the reason is because we have grown up in a totally different society than those in Iraq. Comparing the US judicial system with Iraq’s is like comparing Apples to Orange Flavored Lifesavers Candy. When our forefathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and planted the seeds of a fair and impartial Judicial system, they were essentially declaring that “We the people” will rule ourselves. When we go overseas and set up governments to our standards and try to give birth to little America-clones in the rest of the world, it doesn’t work. Before we got our independence, we needed to fight the British, throw them from our land, and establish a fair government free of oppression. Things would have gone differently if France had come fight the British for us, section us off from ourselves, and establish our government for us. You think we hate France now, imagine if we all had to speak French.