Opaque Lucidity

Battle For The Founding Fathers

As we've been caught up in the plight of a gay Congressman and his untoward online conversations, something that really matters has been going on in Iraq: a battle to end the insurgency in Baghdad. It has been an especially deadly week for Americans there, but the thought is that if Baghdad becomes balkanized, the entire nation will be lost.

I don't write much about the war nowadays because I have nothing new to say. I worry about it, because I don't see a way in which we can ever leave behind a nation which stands a chance of remaining a democracy. The history of the Middle East is full of one tyrant defeating another, then another, and so on. If the majority of Iraqis begin to see us as comparable to an occupying Roman legion, then what will happen when we are gone? Most likely, the strongest group of terrorists will establish a Taliban-like dictatorship/theocracy.

I know a man locally named Joe who went to Iraq as a civilian contractor. I asked him about his thoughts on the Iraqi people and their view on Americans. He said that they do see us as interloping occupiers, but that they had been taught for at least a generation to hate Americans---it was one of the basic tenets of Saddam Hussein's regime. Thus, Joe was not surprised by the Iraqis' attitude.

One thing I see missing in Iraq is a group of Founding Fathers. Even though revisionists have done their best to make our founders look like lucky white guys, those of us who know better realize that they were an extraordinary group of human beings. They had frailties, as we all do, but they risked everything for an idea that had not been tried in modern times. Most of them could have continued to live their lives in relative comfort as British subjects. And as a parent state, England was by no means an oppressor. They needed the American Colonies as much as the Colonies needed England. The War for Independence was just that: not a revolution (like in France) wherein all the old traditions and beliefs were thrown out the window, but a statement that we wanted to be our own nation. It was just that simple. We kept many of the British traditions and started some of our own, but even today we have many things in common.

Iraq has never known independence as we know it. Their government has always been a dictatorial third party with little concern for the welfare of the common man. No amount of American manpower and aid can let the "Arab Street" know what independence is about. Instead, the lesson will have to be taught by Iraqis, by brave men and women who are willing to risk everything for an idea. The idea is stronger than any radical Islamic sham religion, but it doesn't seem that way right now. The people will have to be sold on the idea.

In short, Iraqis need Iraqi heroes. They need a George Washington, who made sure that the Presidency did not become a position of royalty and who gave up power at a time when he could have become a dictator for life. They need a Benjamin Franklin, who sold the idea of the United States to Europe and who, without a doubt, was the first American as we know them today. We are who we are because of these men and many others whose names we may never know. Without Founding Fathers of their own, I'm afraid that Iraq will remain a nation divided by both religion and the very concept of what a nation is.