Julio's "attack," as you call it, was a little less vehement than
Pat Robertson's attack on his country's leader, was it not?
Not really, Julio said
"Do you realize that you may be living in a
terrorist superpower, by now?"
Julio was implying that our nation was a
"terrorist superpower", Pat Robertson was not an attack on the country of
Venezuala, just on its President. Julio included me in his attack and to me
that is more vehement. That we invade countries a la Hitler--that is
completely bogus. Whether one wants to believe it or not, we and the entire
Western World thought Sadaam had WMD's. We were obviously wrong--but all that
Sadaam had to do was to open up to free inspections instead of hindering them
and we would have had to back off. He was the one who obfuscated the facts--if
he had indeed dismantled them, as he apparently did, then why not prove that
he had done so. Why not open up to inspections of his palaces, why not let the
news media have free reign of the country. He simply thought he could play the
game of pretending to have them --and even the perception of him having
them--was enough for his purposes. Much the same game that Israel played for
years and indeed is still playing--I have never seen any facts that Israel
unequivocably has the bomb--they have not tested it to my knowledge, but if
her enemies think she has one, she has achieved a great deal of deterrency
(sp). By keeping it "well I may have them or I may not, but you will
never know--do you want to call my bluff and find out" essentially gives him a
great deal of power. He did not think we would ever call his blufff. We
did--we really had very little choice. And if we did not believe that he had
WMD's, I do not think we would have put all those soldiers through all those
horrific gas training exercises--we just did not know because Sadaam would not
let us know, and that was an untenable situation for us. We were indeed duped
about WMD's, but he allowed us to be duped. He could have laid
his cards on the table and shown us what he had--but he chose not to. He tried
to finesse a weak hand and failed. Or then again he might have thought he
had WMD's and wanted to hide them, but his underlings were too scared to tell
him otherwise. He might have been duped by his own people. We were not duped
by our own, we were duped by him.
As far as how it will work
out, it probably will not, because any kind of democratic republic demands
that serious compromises have to be made. That is the nature of that form of
government, and as a very educated Sunni Iraqi told me in Dubai a few months
ago, we (the Iraqis) do not know the art of compromise. He said to me that the
US had given the Iraqis a great gift, the elimination of a tyrant--but
doubted whether or not it could possibly work out. The competing factions
simply have incredible differences in their world views. Just as America was
formed with the Great Compromise, 100 years later we had a civil war when
those divides became too great and the Great Compromise fell apart. The only
way this country has remained a country as long as it has with as diverse a
population as it has, has been its ability, built into the Constitution, to
demand compromise from competing factions. And the fact that it has the
Bill of Rights which gurantees those God given rights. Pure democracy without
constitutional guarantees is nothing more than tyranny of the majority over
the minority. That's really what bugs me about Mr. Bush--he has it essentially
correct in saying that free and democratic societies are inherrently good--but
its not just the democratic part, but the constitutional part is what is
really important. Mr. Chavez in Venezuala carried 58% of the vote--that means
that 42% did not vote for him. Without checks, those 42% at at the mercy of
the leader of the 58%. Now, I do not know how the constitution of
Venezuala is written--how the court system is constructed, or how the
President's powers are held in check. In the US it was essentially 50-50 in
the popular vote--and in this era, the Republicans hold majorities in both
houses of congress and the presidency. But they can still not impose
unconstitutional laws on the land. And one also has to remember that although
many of the individual states that make up the union--we are after all the
United States of America, not the United People of America, have lost power to
the Federal Government, the States still have a great deal of power. Another
check on the majority. You can always move to a differerent state. The Left
Coast can still pass all kinds of quirky laws, that we in the Middle South do
not have to follow. (thank the Constitution). They can limit the freedoms of
their citizens as much as they like as long as they do not abrogate the US
Constitution (or their own). They can levy their own taxes, create their own
courts, etc, etc. And yet, the founding fathers one state was equal to
another, no matter what their population. South Dakota with 1/2 million people
still has the same number of Senators as Californina or New York. This is what
makes the country work (albeit very slowly). And this was the only way to
bring together a diverse collection of former colonies into a federation. If
the Senate was like the House of Representatives, then California, New York,
and Texas could rule all the other states.
Tommy
"If you're a big enough fool to climb a tree and like a
cat refuse to come down, then someone who loves you has to make as big a fool
of himself to rescue you."
W Percy
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