Oct 23, 10:02 PM
Cheering for Iraqis
An interesting TNR editorial begins with this provoctive passage:
The remarkable thing about the terror in Iraq,” Fouad Ajami recently wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “is the silence with which it is greeted in other Arab lands.” There is a second, even more remarkable thing about the terror in Iraq: the silence with which it is greeted in many Western countries, including the United States. Too many people speak of the insurgency in Iraq not just as a security problem and an obstacle to political progress, but as if the Sunni jihadists and their Baathist comrades of convenience constitute a legitimate resistance to some brutal tyranny intent on stealing sovereignty from its rightful owners. The insurgency in Iraq is not just a practical problem. It is the new expression of the old hostility to freedom.
The TNR editors go on to write that they recognize the constitutional process was marked by flaws that cannot be simply written off, but that signs indicate that we should be hopeful nonetheless.
In any case, the sight of Iraqis lined up, at great personal risk, to vote was as thrilling as when El Salvadoran peasants and South African blacks and Afghan women cast ballots that proclaimed, in effect, “I have a right to help decide,” which is the real essence of democracy.
Soon, the trial of Saddam will be in full swing, reminding the world of the monstrous ways he treated and expended human life. And yet the monster himself will experience one of the benefits of America’s intervention: He will have a fair trial.
George W. Bush is a very bad president, to say the least. But I’ll be damned if I let my distaste for one American politician and political party prevent me from cheering the progress of democracy—if that is indeed what this turns out to be—in a country that has been denied it for so long.
I want Bush et al to pay a price for their lies and their bumbling, but we need to advocate for leadership change and to speak out against our own misdeeds (brutal handling of detainees, failing to get UN support for the Iraqi invasion, etc., etc.) without losing sight of the fact that even our relatively very bad leaders are on the correct side of the grand spectrum separating freedom, peace, and prosperity on the one side from autocracy, authoritarianism, and poverty on the other.
Maybe these things can go without saying, but sometimes I’m not sure. I think that those of us who care about human rights and bringing freedom and the possibility of a reasonably happy existence to more of the billions of people in the world need to be shouting our support for Iraqis and denouncing terrorists as the worthless murderers that they are without always and immediately restating that American foreign policy in some ways encourages them.
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Freedom: reduced social services and privatization of national resources
Peace: increased police and military powers and decreased civil liberties
Prosperity: increased foreign ownership and reliance on foreign markets
Immediately after its invasion, the U.S. leadership started implementing this brand of prosperity in Iraq. I assume the other items will follow if they can ever get the country under control. Leave it to the administration that brought us the "Blue Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives to say one thing and do exactly the opposite.
Congratulations on your blog technology migration!
— Arlo Oct 28, 11:19 AM #