There is a valid argument to be made that the bill of rights was a monumental mistake. By enumerating certain rights it implies that those are the only rights we have despite the 9th and 10 amendments which are routinely ignored. Further by purporting to protect us against government it ignores the basic premise that government could not infringe on these areas because they didn't have the enumerated power to do so. It turned the basic concept of a grant of specific powers on it's head with the clear inference that government could do anything except interfere with our rights. It was at one time clear that government only had those powers granted to it by the constitution, but now they have unlimited power only restrained by the bill of rights which they constantly redefine.
You can't give people freedom. You can see it in our own country. People that have never stopped to consider how amazing it is that we became a free country yearn for power over their fellow man. People are begging daily to become slaves to an omnipotent state. And you think we can impose a "bill of rights" on some foreign nation when even our allies don't believe in the concept of inalienable rights and the idea is denigrated here on a daily basis? I'm pretty sure it isn't going to work.
But the 9th and 10th amendments are pretty explicit aren't they? You can't criticize the Bill of Rights for implying something when it explicitly states the opposite of what you say it implies.
The fact is that words on paper are ultimately powerless. It comes down to maintaining a culture that believes in those words. We've failed to maintain a culture that takes the 9th and 10th amendments seriously. That's not the Bill of Rights' or the Framers' fault.
Well, I would argue then that it is the ignoring and redefining of the Bill of Rights that has caused our problems and not the ten amendments themselves, as you yourself used as your argument. Imagine what could be done with freedom of speech in Iran, with freedom of assembly in North Korea, or with freedom from cruel and unusual punishment in the recent Saddam Hussein led Iraq?
That the Bill is not administered or thought of correctly., or that it is redefined by tyrants is not a valid argument for its’ suppression. These natural rights should be extended to every human on the planet, and they are not. To what extent a country allows these rights to exist should be the controlling factor in how we deal with them.