Because a day like today (June 30th, 2009) has dawned in Bagdhad.
I am fully aware in writing this that there are formidable issues of ethnic and religious rivalry that still threaten the new nation, and will persist into the indefinite future. But are these any different than the ones that beset this nation not so long ago? Or any other nation? There are two schools of thought in English political philosophy, one descending from Hobbes, that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and humankind the prisoners of its appetites, the other from Locke and Hutcheson, that human beings are fully capable of self-governance and freeing themselves from the historical nightmares of tyranny and theocracy. The second theme is, of course, fully embodied and articulated in the Declaration of Independence, in which Jefferson actually semi-plagiarized a great deal of Locke.
You either believe this stuff or you don't. I do. A lot of the editors who are going to be publishing copies of the Declaration and Gettysburg Address this next Saturday (July 4th) give that legacy only lip service. What has been enormously disheartening to me in the last six years is to see the Deranged Opposition turn its back on the most basic ideas that the United States offered to the world, embracing fascism and racism - anything to justify its loathing of George Bush.
I actually opposed the war in 2003, worried that the human cost would outweigh the benefit. But I never descended into the moral fury that seemed to engulf the opposition. That a positive outcome might be possible, that the United States even in its worst days was grimly and clumsily going about the business of nation (not empire) building - that seemed to me apparent. It was a basic truth that the anti-Administration faction went to almost any lengths to deny.
To say that a government based on the free consent of the governed is possible doesn't mean that it is going to come to pass. Our own nation was not able to bridge a colossal cultural gulf, and the related issue of slavery, without a monstrous civil war. (A Hobbesian writing in 1789 who could envision the later war would have smugly cited that catastrophe as proof that the new democratic nation was a failure.) The United States was also almost miraculously blessed with the right kind of heroic personalities at the right time, both on the macro scale(Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt) and micro (that a man of the stature of Joshua Chamberlain happened to command the volunteer Maine regiment stationed on the extreme left flank of the Union forces on the second day of Gettysburg.)
But the plain fact is that victory in a conflict of this sort cannot consist of more than the providing to a free people the opportunity to escape the dead hand of history that has held them in its grasp, to establish in concrete reality that government based on the consent of the government - and that is where we are today. There is still a long way to go? The stability created in the last few years is fragile and may fall apart? Absolutely true - but also true of every nation on the face of the earth, including this one. I am simply not going to accept the notion that any people are condemned to despotism and/or the rule of priests forever and ever.
So congratulations to all those who labored and sacrificed to achieve such a day. God speed to the Iraqi people, and their nation, may God smile upon them as He (She, It, or They) did upon this fractured land once upon a time.
I am fully aware in writing this that there are formidable issues of ethnic and religious rivalry that still threaten the new nation, and will persist into the indefinite future. But are these any different than the ones that beset this nation not so long ago? Or any other nation? There are two schools of thought in English political philosophy, one descending from Hobbes, that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and humankind the prisoners of its appetites, the other from Locke and Hutcheson, that human beings are fully capable of self-governance and freeing themselves from the historical nightmares of tyranny and theocracy. The second theme is, of course, fully embodied and articulated in the Declaration of Independence, in which Jefferson actually semi-plagiarized a great deal of Locke.
You either believe this stuff or you don't. I do. A lot of the editors who are going to be publishing copies of the Declaration and Gettysburg Address this next Saturday (July 4th) give that legacy only lip service. What has been enormously disheartening to me in the last six years is to see the Deranged Opposition turn its back on the most basic ideas that the United States offered to the world, embracing fascism and racism - anything to justify its loathing of George Bush.
I actually opposed the war in 2003, worried that the human cost would outweigh the benefit. But I never descended into the moral fury that seemed to engulf the opposition. That a positive outcome might be possible, that the United States even in its worst days was grimly and clumsily going about the business of nation (not empire) building - that seemed to me apparent. It was a basic truth that the anti-Administration faction went to almost any lengths to deny.
To say that a government based on the free consent of the governed is possible doesn't mean that it is going to come to pass. Our own nation was not able to bridge a colossal cultural gulf, and the related issue of slavery, without a monstrous civil war. (A Hobbesian writing in 1789 who could envision the later war would have smugly cited that catastrophe as proof that the new democratic nation was a failure.) The United States was also almost miraculously blessed with the right kind of heroic personalities at the right time, both on the macro scale(Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt) and micro (that a man of the stature of Joshua Chamberlain happened to command the volunteer Maine regiment stationed on the extreme left flank of the Union forces on the second day of Gettysburg.)
But the plain fact is that victory in a conflict of this sort cannot consist of more than the providing to a free people the opportunity to escape the dead hand of history that has held them in its grasp, to establish in concrete reality that government based on the consent of the government - and that is where we are today. There is still a long way to go? The stability created in the last few years is fragile and may fall apart? Absolutely true - but also true of every nation on the face of the earth, including this one. I am simply not going to accept the notion that any people are condemned to despotism and/or the rule of priests forever and ever.
So congratulations to all those who labored and sacrificed to achieve such a day. God speed to the Iraqi people, and their nation, may God smile upon them as He (She, It, or They) did upon this fractured land once upon a time.
Comments