The attempt to establish a democratic Iraq, however disappointing the experience has been so far, is unlikely to be abandoned very easily in the near future -- and perhaps not for as long as a the ghost of a shadow of a chance remains that it may be attained -- not only because the current administration is so invested in it, but because the alternatives of divide and rule and naked power politics, which would have been adopted without a second thought by Empires in the early 20th century, are too cold-blooded and heartless to be easily embraced by an American public which genuinely wishes the Iraqi people well.
In a separate post at One Cosmos, Gagdad Bob astutely notes:
One of the biggest problems we face in the war on Islamo-fascism is that even the worst of us has such rudimentary decency that we cannot imagine how evil our enemies are, while our enemies -- and most of our friends -- literally cannot imagine how good the Unites States is....
Grotesquely, the same people who cannot imagine how evil our enemies are, fantasize that people on our side -- decent and selfless public servants such as Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney -- are in fact evil. How often does one hear the scurrilous charge that Vice President Cheney’s motives are entirely pecuniary, and that he just wants to enrich his friends at Haliburton or in the oil industry?
Let's be honest, as Bob suggests, and admit that there has never been a single country on the face of the earth; nor could many even imagine a country, that is as decent and good as America; and which is so committed to the idea of human freedom that it's people would fight and die to bring freedom to another country. Bob aptly describes this as "the unimaginable goodness of America."
I wholeheartedly concur. All my life I have counted myself almost unbearably fortunate to have been born in the wonderful country. I choke up whenever I think about it; whenever I ponder the philosophy of the Founders, who despite their very human flaws were able to creat a nation that could not have even been imagined by most of the people of their own time; and still cannot be imagined or appreciated by the supposedly progressive and advanced people of the modern world.
What an incomparable achievement America was and is! We are most certainly not burdened with the need to be perfect (only the insanely unrealistic and out-of-touch-with-reality political left suffers from that toxic brand of narcissisism). And we frequently have strayed and stumbled from time to time--it cannot be otherwise for any human endeavor. But what a marvelous triumph of freedom, of progress, of human achievement America is! A living, breathing and real-world expression of the abstract ideas of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" .
So much do we love the freedom and values of this country, we have always been willing to put our lives on the line, not only to insure that the blessings of liberty will be passed onto our own children, but to pass it on to all people; all races; all religions.
Russ Vaugn, at American Thinker reminds us that, "America is good enough to die for even when she is wrong"; and goes further to identify what it is about America that is so splendid:
Deceased author John D. MacDonald, who wrote the wonderful Travis McGee mystery series, once explained through his fictional hero, McGee, the way to make correct moral decisions and it is a simple wisdom that has stayed in my brain, but not always exemplified by my behavior, through the remainder of my life. It is nothing more than this: do the hard thing. When faced with tough choices, look to that course of action which is the one you want least to follow because it appears to be the most difficult for you; it may hurt personally, but almost always, it is the right course for you to follow for the good of others.
When faced with touch choices, America has almost always chosen to do the hard thing; to take the more difficult course; the road less travelled--because more often than not, it is the right thing to do. And it makes all the difference.
I wrote in a previous post titled "What is Easy vs What is Right", a comment on the most recent Harry Potter film:
...Rowling's series has become the metaphor of our times. Whether this is conscious or unconscious on Rowling's part is neither here nor there.
When Dumbledore says to Harry at the end of the movie (paraphrasing), "Dark and difficult times lay ahead. Soon we will have to decide between doing what is easy and what is right", he is expressing the critical moral issue of our own time.
There are many people in this country who always demand that we take the easy path. Those are the same people who put enormous stock in opinion polls and make decisions based on how popular they are likely to be. Somehow they have forgotten--if they ever knew to begin with-- that doing what needs to be done, the right thing, is not always the popular thing. The hard choices and the sacrifices necessary to see them through, are beyond the moral, intellectual, or physical capacities of such people--unless they can feel the polls are with them--then it magically becomes very easy.
But that is not what this country is about; nor has it ever been.
Sadly, it seems that many of these people seem to end up as our elected officials. I would also say that they are overwhelmingly overrepresented in today's Democratic Party, but they also exist in all segments of our society. When the going gets tough, they whine and then they give up.
The American public may be confused about exactly how well things are going in Iraq--they have good cause to wonder with all the violent images and negative words coming from the mouths of the media and from some of their elected leaders--but when push comes to shove, the public has a better sense of what is right than any of those posturing peacocks (and peahens) in the leadership positions of the Democratic party (or the Republican Party for that matter).
But in spite of the concerted effort to brainwash the American public into thinking that America's motives in Iraq--indeed, in all parts of the world--are fundamentally evil; made by a coalition of the the antiwar left, the MSM, and other elements ready to discard the values that America has always stood for; the American public still believes in the essential goodness of this country and the values she stands for.
The evil we are confronting in the world is not going to go quietly away. Denial and appeasement are the landmarks of the easy path. Pretending that the world's problems are caused by America and condemning this country for its essential goodness while placating those who truly are evil, will not be an effective strategy for dealing with the issues of our time. Thousands, perhaps millions of people (if Ahmadinejad, Zawahiri, and Bin Laden have their way) will pay the price of the pervasive moral relativism that has poisoned the world--and which even infects a portion of this country.
This moral relativism makes it easy to pretend that the only danger to life; to liberty; to peace; to civilization is America itself. And as the relativists babble on with their postmodern newspeak, and take delight in undermining and hobbling that which is good; the real evil is allowed to grow stronger and its shadow darkens more of the world with every passing day.
Dark and difficult times lie ahead. I hope that America will never shy away from the tough choices and blindly take the easy path... because, no matter how difficult or unpopular it may be to stand and fight for freedom and to defy tyranny, it will always be the right thing to do.
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