It may just be a result of the president's visit to Salt Lake, but it seems to me that anti-Bush rhetoric has been reaching a crescendo of late. News reports show Bush losing position in the polls, etc.. Iraq is routinely called a quagmire, despite the fact that they have had elections and are finalizing a Constitution that was quite clearly drafted by the Iraqis.
My personal low for Bush came with the shock and awe campaign followed the failure to defend Iraq's cultural treasures.
The fact that Americans troops are staying and slugging out the fight for a legitimate attempt at democracy makes me proud. The ongoing violence in Iraq shows a people caught in the struggle between forces wanting their leaders to rise through violence and those who want a system based on civil discourse. I was upset with the US invading Iraq, but am happy that we are standing beside Iraqis working for a civil form of government.
Progressive elements in the US are calling this current process a quagmire.
I don't see the quagmire, if any thing, it seems that the US is pushing the transitional process too quickly. The rapid pace for writing the Constitution fails to give sufficient time for public input. One of the news reports I saw mentioned that the current Iraqi Constitution is looking less like a contract between the Iraqi government and its people...and is looking more like a pact between warring factions in Iraq.
If anything, the process of writing a Constitution is going too quickly and is missing the deliberation needed to create a lasting document. The greatest fear is that the rush to get a Constitution on the table runs the risk of creating a document so geared at appeasing the conflicts between Kurds, Sunni and Sh'ites that it fails to provide adequate protection for the many minorities in Iraq.
Wars are clean and spectacular. They make great footage. The creative process of developing a deliberative democracy is painfully slow, full of rhetoric and contentious.
In the long run, I think the efforts by Progressives to paint the process of writing a Constitution as a quagmire will back fire.
Where Bush failed was not telling us that invading Afghanistan and Iraq would entail a decade long committment and creating the illusion that the fight for freedom is simply a matter of a shock and awe campaign. Such techniques work to establish a dictatorship, democracies are necessarily ugly and usually take several generations before the democratic ideals firmly take root.
Blogging is just about typing words in a little tiny text box.
ReplyDeleteBlogs are ordered chronologically. They are best for mind farts about current events.
I don't think it is good for historical events like the abusive use of Agent Orange in Vietnam. I hope that there are not any current events involving agent orange! Today we are dealing with the long term consequences of a horrible mistake.
Your agent orange site might work better with a traditional home page format...or as a discussion board.