I've been putting this off... I don't like the way I feel about this Administration... I want to admit that perhaps they were right about just plopping our culture and values into a country like Iraq and everyone living happily ever after... I can't do that and it irritates me. This is the guy who was flown out to the Abraham Lincoln on May 2, 2003, to announce "mission accomplished" in Iraq... not that we had Sadam Hussein in custody at the time... or Osama bin Laden for that matter (remember him?... the one who did attack us?). I just can't buy into it.
I think Eric Alterman captured where I'm coming from today. It goes a little deeper maybe... Even if the new Iraqi government goes on to write a beautiful constitution and to hold fair and free elections and survives in peace and prosperity for a thousand years, that does not make invading Iraq right. A happy ending would be nice, but we have not treated others as we would wish to be treated.
If you scroll down in Alterman's blog, you'll notice a letter from Charles Pierce that I'm going to copy here, too. It mirrored my thoughts as I looked at the pictures of people who had walked for hours to stand in line to vote in Iraq. On the best day of George Bush's life all he did was to perhaps hasten their opportunity. Those folks... .whether it was 70% or 50% or 10%... literally walked the walk... no kevlar... no armor... to vote. Bless their hearts.
From Charles Pierce:
You do not own their courage.
The people who stood in line Sunday did not stand in line to make Americans feel good about themselves.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line to justify lies about Saddam and al-Qaeda, so you don't own their courage, Stephen Hayes. They did not stand in line to justify lies about weapons of mass destruction, or to justify the artful dodginess of Ahmad Chalabi, so you don't own their courage, Judith Miller. They did not stand in line to provide pretty pictures for vapid suits to fawn over, so you don't own their courage, Howard Fineman, and neither do you, Chris Matthews.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line in order to justify the dereliction of a kept press. They did not stand in line to make right the wrongs born out of laziness, cowardice, and the easy acceptance of casual lying. They did not stand in line for anyone's grand designs. They did not stand in line to play pawns in anyone's great game, so you don't own their courage, you guys in the PNAC gallery.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line to provide American dilettantes with easy rhetorical weapons, so you don't own their courage, Glenn Reynolds, with your cornpone McCarran act out of the bowels of a great university that deserves a helluva lot better than your sorry hide. They did not stand in line to be the instruments of tawdry vilification and triumphal hooting from bloghound commandos. They did not stand in line to become useful cudgels for cheap American political thuggery, so you don't own their courage, Freeper Nation.
You do not own their courage.
They did not stand in line to justify a thousand mistakes that have led to more than a thousand American bodies. They did not stand in line for the purpose of being a national hypnotic for a nation not even their own. They did not stand in line for being the last casus belli standing. They did not stand in line on behalf of people's book deals, TV spots, honorarium checks, or tinpot celebrity. They did not stand in line to be anyone's talking points.
You do not own their courage.
We all should remember that.
Showing posts with label Exporting Democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Exporting Democracy. Show all posts
Monday, January 31, 2005
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Thoughts on Trust
It's the afternoon of Inauguration Day... the awful deed is done and I need to just deal with it. I so want to believe that I'm just missing the many virtues of these people who will govern for the next four years... I want to believe that...
Condi Rice certainly expressed shock and dismay that her credibilty was questioned during her confirmation hearings. I'd like to give Dr. Condileeza Rice formerly of Stanford University the benefit of the doubt... I'd like to... It would almost be better to have a Secretary of State who was stupid rather than... disingenuous?
Mr. Cheney apparently feels that we'd be golden in Iraq right now if only we'd known that all the alternative leadership in Iraq had been killed off in 1991. You'd think we'd have known that, wouldn't you? I mean we could pinpoint all of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction so why didn't we notice that those "hundreds of thousands of people" weren't there any more? You don't suppose any of them could have been in the kill-zone during the invasion or subsequent operations do you?
It was reassuring to read (I couldn't bear to listen) that Mr. Bush said "freedom, by its nature, must be chosen,” and he promised “America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling.” You know... all evidence to the contrary...
Closer to home, of course, Mr. Bush and his minions have been spending some long and sleepless nights working on the salvation of our Social Security programs... No, I'm sorry... I've got to go with the Crabby Old Lady on this one, too. This guy's trying to sell me snake oil... again.
Condi Rice certainly expressed shock and dismay that her credibilty was questioned during her confirmation hearings. I'd like to give Dr. Condileeza Rice formerly of Stanford University the benefit of the doubt... I'd like to... It would almost be better to have a Secretary of State who was stupid rather than... disingenuous?
Mr. Cheney apparently feels that we'd be golden in Iraq right now if only we'd known that all the alternative leadership in Iraq had been killed off in 1991. You'd think we'd have known that, wouldn't you? I mean we could pinpoint all of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction so why didn't we notice that those "hundreds of thousands of people" weren't there any more? You don't suppose any of them could have been in the kill-zone during the invasion or subsequent operations do you?
It was reassuring to read (I couldn't bear to listen) that Mr. Bush said "freedom, by its nature, must be chosen,” and he promised “America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling.” You know... all evidence to the contrary...
Closer to home, of course, Mr. Bush and his minions have been spending some long and sleepless nights working on the salvation of our Social Security programs... No, I'm sorry... I've got to go with the Crabby Old Lady on this one, too. This guy's trying to sell me snake oil... again.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Spreading Democracy
I need to not post on here when my head isn't in it. Yesterday I had a feel for what I wanted to get out but I was distracted. It's not so much my consciousness that I might not be the only one reading this... but that it didn't meet my need to articulate what I wanted to say... and that's just frustrating.
It bugs me that this Administration is pushing this election in Iraq as a huge step forward... and it almost certainly isn't. All other considerations aside, significant numbers of Iraqis won't be able to vote... in this country as well as in Iraq. In Iraq this appears to impact mostly the Sunni population which isn't going to win a popular election anyway, but still...
Here in the United States there are five... five... registration and polling places. Throughout the Southwestern U.S. there are 70,000 ethnic Iraqis who must travel to the old MCAS El Toro site to register and then again to vote at the end of the month.
The White House has pointed to the alleged democratization of Afghanistan as a victory for us. Didn't Karzai campaign primarily in the capital and in Kandahar because he couldn't be protected elsewhere in the country? Oh, I know that there were a kazillion ballots cast and Karzai won by a huge margin. It happens. Wasn't there a precinct in Ohio that polled 117% of its registered voters?
Is it just me or are some cultures maybe not ready for democracy... or whatever we're trying to impose? Even with the tradition of the Magna Carta and British parliamentary process, wasn't the Massachusetts Colony pretty much a religious oligarchy that banished or burned people at the stake? Didn't it take us several decades to start to get things together?
How democratic is the assumption that we have everything so together ourselves now that we have the right and the duty to impose our will and our institutions on other cultures? How right is that?
It bugs me that this Administration is pushing this election in Iraq as a huge step forward... and it almost certainly isn't. All other considerations aside, significant numbers of Iraqis won't be able to vote... in this country as well as in Iraq. In Iraq this appears to impact mostly the Sunni population which isn't going to win a popular election anyway, but still...
Here in the United States there are five... five... registration and polling places. Throughout the Southwestern U.S. there are 70,000 ethnic Iraqis who must travel to the old MCAS El Toro site to register and then again to vote at the end of the month.
The White House has pointed to the alleged democratization of Afghanistan as a victory for us. Didn't Karzai campaign primarily in the capital and in Kandahar because he couldn't be protected elsewhere in the country? Oh, I know that there were a kazillion ballots cast and Karzai won by a huge margin. It happens. Wasn't there a precinct in Ohio that polled 117% of its registered voters?
Is it just me or are some cultures maybe not ready for democracy... or whatever we're trying to impose? Even with the tradition of the Magna Carta and British parliamentary process, wasn't the Massachusetts Colony pretty much a religious oligarchy that banished or burned people at the stake? Didn't it take us several decades to start to get things together?
How democratic is the assumption that we have everything so together ourselves now that we have the right and the duty to impose our will and our institutions on other cultures? How right is that?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)