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Current Events » in reply to crowed over as a "victory" or a "conversion"

Success in Iraq
Mary Anne — (archived)

The ones who will deserve to celebrate success in Iraq will be the Iraqis, for the achievement will be theirs.

Our role is that of catalyst. Catalysts' roles are often violent and destructive without being evil. We are the forest fire; they will be the new growth. We are the volcano; they are the fertile new earth near the crater. Ours is the flame and theirs will be the glory. We can't expect gratitude for that, so we should just get over ourselves, do the job and get out of the way when we can. We can hope for a realistic reward: some tolerance and stability in a violent and fractious region, forgiveness, and possibly even, eventually, friendship.

Our moral perspective ought to forbid us from the cavalier pronouncements about "inconsequential" deaths and destruction caused by our activities. A little humility would be refreshing. It ought also to accept that the catalytic act of invasion and occupation is an act of essential lawlessness that we felt compelled to undertake in reparation for the previous acts of egregious lawlessness that supported and fed a regime of frank brutality up to the point at which its leader invaded one of our client states and threatened another. To tie it to the war on terror continues to be disingenuous.

We found a brute in Iraq and helped make him a monster. The reason we are there now is to repair the damage caused by our previous inaction there, and our previous actions as well. Would it be too much to admit this frankly to the world?

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