KKK Out of Iraq!
Everybody knows that Lyndon Johnson freed the slaves. Lincoln would have, but he died too soon. I know what JFK said about it, but Andrew Johnson should have been impeached. What he did was allow the backsliding to begin immediately. One hundred years of additional suffering for black Americans between the two Johnsons.
Why should I bring this up now? What good does it do after all this time? Well, my concern is that the Ku Klux Klan rides again in the streets of Baghdad. Let’s talk about a privileged minority, accustomed to having their way with an inferior people, suddenly deprived of their righteous place at the head of society -- humiliated by belligerent invaders, consigned to poverty, stripped of rightful place, rank and honor, forced to scrounge and scrabble for a living like common laborers.
A terrible war was fought, primarily over the slavery and suppression of the majority. If we could live those post-war days over again, knowing what we know today, would we allow the KKK to rise? That is the position we are in with the fate of Iraq. The names are not those of ex-confederate generals, but the attitudes are similar, the anger is the same. In those days, we lost interest. We gave up on the most important goal. We allowed the terror cells to organize and exert their evil influence. The terror was used to reassert the ancien regime, almost, though not quite, as if nothing had happened. The right people were once again on top.
Now if we hope to prevent the same dynamic from working in Iraq, we will need to win a second war, this time a war of wills. We cannot desert the Shia and Kurds until they have the organization, the self-confidence and the material means to fight back against the evil tide. This coalition of fanatics kills civilians for no other purpose than to demoralize them, to demonstrate the futility of resistance. They will accept no society other than the one they prescribe. They believe that the killing will stop only when they have had their will. We have to prove them wrong. They cannot be allowed to prevail.
5/11/2005 8:23 PM
posted by jj mollo @ 5/11/2005 08:30:00 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Thanks. I don't see any Lincolns or Lyndon Johnsons out there yet. Adnan Chalabi has the political skills of a Lyndon Johnson perhaps, but who knows whether the egalitarian impulse is there. Sistani keeps surpising me though, but he's more like a moral force, like Frederick Douglass. Forcing the analogy, I guess Sistani and Chalabi would have been among the slaves. We're looking for a good Sunni.
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