Paul Berman has been a reliable liberal critic of totalitarianism, and he turns his lens to Iraq’s prospects in this piece for the Boston Globe:
Saddam’s Ba’ath Party has always claimed to be restoring the ancient national glory of the Arab people, from the glory days of the Caliphate of the seventh century, when the Arab Empire was on the march. But the Ba’ath is not, in fact, an ancient Arab institution. The party was founded in Damascus in 1943 on the basis of doctrines from the 1920s and `30s, which were subsequently updated to include a number of doctrines from later times, as well. These ideas were pretty much Mussolini’s and those of the extreme right in Europe, mixed with a few ideas from the Stalin era of Soviet communism and given a distinctly Arab varnish. The iconography of Saddam’s Ba’ath looks like the iconography of modern Western totalitarianism because that is, in fact, exactly what it is.
The modern age has been the age of totalitarianism, but it has also been the age of totalitarianism’s demise. In one country after another, totalitarianism’s overthrow has led to scenes of statue-toppling and dancing crowds-scenes of revolution. And so, it is natural to wonder if revolution is the scene before our eyes in Baghdad, too-if we are observing not just the superficial fact of a tyrant’s fall or what is cynically called ”regime change,” but the deeper reality of a growth in human freedom, the beginning of a revolution for the liberal values of individual and minority rights, the rule of law, tolerance, and justice.
The key factor is whether liberal democratic leaders come forward, as they did in Afghanistan and Poland, but didn’t in Yugoslavia:
Let us fear, then. But let us also remember that, at moments like this, every possibility is still in play-the worst, but also the best: the road that leads to Yugoslavia, as well as the road to Poland. Iraq could go either way right now. So let us hope, too. Let us press for greater American involvement, a more generous budget, an all-is-forgiven attitude that welcomes and even requests support from the rest of the world-a big campaign of reconstruction and not a small one.
Building a society of greater freedom than ever before in Iraq, a safer society for its own people and its neighbors and (not least) for us in far-away America-this possibility does exist, even if not in a fairyland version. There is a two-word name for this possibility: liberal revolution. If falling statues of tyrants are a familiar symbol to us, that is because, in modern times, more-or-less successful revolutions have also become familiar. And now let us get ready for the long haul.
There’s clearly going to be pressure on the US and Britain to play a limited role in Iraq’s reconstruction, both physical and political. Berman says we have to resist that pressure, and I agree. There’s going to be a temptation to turn the nation-building over the UN, and in rejecting that we have only to look at the UN’s track record; there are no Germanies or Japans on the UN’s resume, but plenty of Congos and Rwandas. Resistance is more important now than ever.
Link via A & L Daily.