We Need A Hero
It isn't going to be George W. Bush. Someone needs to sit down and have a serious chat with
David Brooks.
First, Brooks claims our national creed states that "
our creator has endowed all human beings with the right to liberty, and the ability to function as democratic citizens".
"Ability to function as democratic citizens"? Isn't Mr. Brooks taking God-given liberty to revise
old Tom Jefferson's words? When Jefferson wrote "..
they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation"...the word "
they" didn't mean to give future Americans the right to impose undue influence on another nation's idea for independence!
Brooks says: "
Bush is putting this tenet of our national creed to a fearsome test in the worst possible circumstances."
In other words, Bush is
imposing freedom on the Iraqis in the name of the American way. The very words
impose and
freedom are impossible philosophical bedfellows. We had a chance to create the conditions for freedom in Iraq. That's as much as we will ever be able to do, in righteousness.
I still recall, however, how the American people were
LIED TO (bald-faced)about the reasons for going to war in Iraq. Before the pre-emptive strike, it was about the imminent threat to America. It was about WMDs. Lies are not honorable. This war was not waged in an honorable light.
While it may have been ultimately good for the Iraqis to be rid of Saddam Hussein, the war has done too much damage to the trust of the American people. Almost 800 American families have forever given up their sons and daughters for the imposition of freedom upon a people who never required or desired it from us.
Our American soldiers are heroes.
We need a leader who can match their courage, wit, and understanding of what it means to love your country with your last breath, if need be. That's what it means to be a hero.
Bush is not the hero we seek.
David Brooks says that if Bush succeeds, the Iraqis will "take responsibility for their future" as they begin to "regard Americans as necessary guests" and they will ultimately "feel they control their lives".
I wonder how it is David Brooks doesn't see that the Iraqis are already "taking responsibility for their future" in their obvious desire to expel Americans from their lands? How is it that Brooks doesn't see that Iraqis obviously have a strong desire to "control their own lives"?
Is he blind?
There is going to be a civil war in Iraq this summer. Many more American troops will have to die because of too many blind pundits and the chickenhawk leaders who make the word "freedom" their political whore.
The best thing that could happen for Bush (and our troops) is to have the new Iraqi interim government tell the U.S., come July 1st, to get out of their country.
People who blow themselves up and leaders who command their armies to storm into nations with bombs and guns always claim to know the 'truth' better than everybody else. They almost always claim to know what "God wants" or "what God said". None of them are acting in righteousness, which, in the end, is always
love.
Using the words of the poet Hafiz, truth means having "profound courage to never relinquish love".
Let the Iraqis be the free people and the free nation God intended them to be.
It's what they want.
America is not God.
God is God.
_____________________________
The Diamond Takes Shape
Some parrots
Have become so skilled with
The human voice
They could give a brilliant discourse
About freedom and God
And an unsighted man nearby might
Even begin applauding with
The thought:
I just heard jewels fall from a
Great saint's mouth,
Though my Master used to say,
"The diamond takes shape slowly
With integrity's great force,
And from
The profound courage to never relinquish love."
Some parrots have become so skilled
With words,
The blind turn over their gold
And lives to caged
Feathers.
--'The Gift - Poems by Hafiz The Great Sufi Master'
Translations by Daniel Ladinsky
