A Better Idea

... We as a people must be nearly unanimous about freedom itself so that we can disagree with one another about almost everything else.

And that’s what seems to be happening in Iraq. The ongoing acceleration in the expression of more and more diverse opinions there shows a growing consensus that public expression of diverse opinions is a good thing.

That’s contagious; it appeals to something deep in human character, something that transcends culture. We humans are designed to think and make decisions, but we have to be taught, and usually we have to be forced, to blindly follow orders. Our fundamental independence can be suppressed but never eliminated. It’s still in there, waiting, in everyone. And now that oppression has lifted, it’s starting to bloom in Iraq. As time goes on, it become more wide spread, in Iraq and elsewhere in the region. And it will accelerate.

And that means we’re beginning to win the war. This was the real reason for conquering Iraq. This is our best strategic weapon against the extremists who attacked us. Their power is in their ideas, their beliefs, and basic to them is a dedication to uniformity and central control, of submission of the masses to the will of the few. We counter that with our idea about individual liberty, and our idea is better. I believe that it’s better ethically and esthetically. Societies based on our idea are more productive in nearly every way. And our idea is more competitive memetically. Our idea is more seductive, more attractive. Against it they have little defense.

Diversity and freedom are anathema to them, and it is our dedication to those things which have made us more powerful than they are. If our idea continues to spread, their ideas will be marginalized and will wither away. And then the war will be over.

We will eliminate our enemies not by killing them in hordes, but by infecting them with ideas which will convert most of them to friends. That process has now begun.

A snippet from SDB’s latest on the war that’s just begun.  Not to mention this one:

France: Transfer Power to Iraq by 2004.

USS Clueless: Stick your demands where the sun doesn’t shine.

We’ll leave Iraq when we, and the Iraqi people, are ready.

From the ABC news article:

France, Germany and Russia who opposed the U.S.-led war on Iraq have been pressing for the U.S.-led coalition to quickly hand over power to a provisional Iraqi government to help stabilize the country...

That is a load of crap.  What will happen is the opposite of stabilization if the US relinquishes control to an unfinished Iraqi government before it’s ready for that.  France (among others) has a vested interest in seeing the US fail in Iraq, and that is made more clear with each new absurd demand they make.