Pondering...
I don't have the book handy, but Tom Holland in his "Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic" prefaces the first chapter with a blank page but for two quotes making exactly opposite assertions. One is from Julius Caesar and the other is someone whose name I can't recall now. Caesar said that every man longs for liberty and the other said that every man secretly longs for a master so that he might be a slave.
I was thinking about the slave/liberty quotes with regard to the Iraq War. The French helped us secure our freedom during the Revolutionary War, but we really really wanted freedom. The Iraqis, for all their suffering under Hussein, don't appear to want freedom that much, with the possible exception of the Kurds. And you can't force freedom on people, as oxymoronic as that might sound. George Bush constantly insists that the freedoms we enjoy are universally desired. Maybe, maybe not. Given Saddam's abuse, perhaps the kid getting beaten up on the playground doesn't want help.
Ramesh Ponnuru quotes David Brooks today and comments, "'[Bush] began this war in Iraq repeating the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence, that our creator has endowed all human beings with the right to liberty, and the ability to function as democratic citizens.' I see two problems with this formulation: God has manifestly not 'endowed all human beings with...the ability to function as democratic citizens,' and the Declaration of Independence says no such thing."
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