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Because, the economic sanctions against Iraq have too long taken their toll on the Iraqi people. After our invasion, essentially liberating Iraqi and help institute a democratic government, the sanctions would be entirely lifted.
Indeed, if, in Iraq, after we took temporary charge of the country following our invasion, we then helped for several years--and for perhaps as many as ten-- to build a successful constitutional, secular, democracy or parliamentary system in Iraq, then, we will historically demonstrate to all of Islamic civilization's 57 or so nations, that a predominantly Islamic nation, and one in the middle of Islamic civilization geographically (unlike Turkey) and an ethnically Arab nation as well, can become a successful secular democracy, and have peaceful and thriving economic ties to the Free World, and to the emerging Democratic World Order being remade post-Cold War.
Furthermore, the creation of a constitutional, multi-party, democracy in Iraq, if it is one that stipulates one or two term limitations for its head of state, will be a milestone in all of Islamic civilization's political culture which, in the past, has been so pervaded by life-time national patriarchal figures, so-called "strongmen" and dictators. These constitutional stipulations of term limits for heads of state--as we Americans learned from the Roosevelt era but I think take for granted and too often underestimate the great importance of--are now, indeed, considered essential to all modern democracies practices in healthy democratic systems globally.
Moreover, the sterling example of head-of-state term limits, to all the nations belonging to Islamic civilization will breath fresh new life--and hope--into the spirits of Islamic civilization's peoples everywhere struggling to be free from despotism. And particularly to be free from the oppressive patriarhial-ism of the Islamic clerics who would impose their theocracies complete with their own life-time patriarchal figures.
To be sure, modern democracy requires a psychological revolution: the distinguishing between the father of the family and the head of a state. In a modern democracy the elected head of state is not the father or the mother of the nation, he or she is but an ordinary person: he or she comes from the people and then returns to them when his or her term or terms of service is over. In this way our democratic leaders stay in touch with the people and do not amass undue power, influence or authority. Thus the people have faith in the political system: they know it can not become a tyranny. Nor can the system be for the glory of one person.
In fact, if we invade Iraq and afterwards help institute a modern democratic system, with two or more political parties, and with term limits for Iraq's future heads of states, I predict that then Iraq will become the leading country politically, economically and socially, within Islamic civilization's 57 or so countries. It will break with the past and nourish the human spirit that needs democracy, democratic government separated from the spirit's need for religion. Islamic civilization has for too long been trying to get all its governance needs and spiritual needs met by Islamic religion.
Yes, I believe, a democratic Iraq will become a leader in the historic process of leading all of Islamic civilization's nations to re-invent their governments as true and modern democracies. Democracies in which their heads of state can not serve their constituencies for more than one or two terms, and therefore can not amass or exercise undue power or authority.
Therefore, US assistance politically to Iraq in this way--after a regime change with the help of many educated and skilled Iraqi expatriates returning to draft and ratify a new constitution--would lead, in the years ahead, to an entire revolution in politic thought and practice throughout all of struggling Islamic civilization. And our assistance in this democratic effort will one day--quicker than we might think--certainly help to bring Islamic civilization's nations, one by one, into the secular democratic fold, or club, of nations.
Therefore, the proposed US invasion of Iraq has a silver lining rich for the overall cause of future peace, global democratic unity and global economic development. Making Iraq a model state within Islamic civilization, for freedom and democracy, would alone be enough of a reason for the US to temporarily take over Iraq. And, also, making a preemptive strike by itself makes sense: against the powerful and wealthy dictatorship of Saddam Hussein and his "revolutionary" Bath party, because they may well attack Israel, or may well assist terrorists to attack us Americans on our own shores in the years just ahead. But together, these reasons seem almost irresistible. If we invade Iraq in this spirit, to defend ourselves preemptively and to usher into being a new democracy in the midst of Islamic civilization, then I'm all for it.
Copyright 2002 by Joady Guthrie
Joady is a global democratic booster-philosopher-writer. He is one of the two sons of Woody and Marjorie Guthrie. Woody, the songwriter who gave us our near second national anthem "This Land is Your Land". Joady is the nuclear family brother of Arlo Guthrie. Arlo, the songwriter who gave us the near anti-Vietnam War anthem "Alice's Restaurant". Joady lives in Albany, California, which is adjacent to Berkeley, home of the Free Speech Movement that helped voice anti-Vietnam War sentiments on college campuses across the USA.
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