How Do You Spell Success?

Major Mike

The Oregonian has again lost the forest for the trees. In the editorial entitled “Iraqi constitution nears liftoff," they begin to lay the groundwork that will ensure whatever the eventual outcome in Iraq…it will most certainly not be a success. The premise of the editorial is that if equal rights for women cannot be guaranteed under the new Constitution, then our invasion of Iraq cannot be considered successful.

Interesting. What they are saying is that unless we are successful at shoving our culture and our values down the throats of a Muslim country, our freeing of twenty-five million people from oppression, torture, rape and death, holds no value. Typical superiority complex held by liberals...”you must embrace our views to be correct.”

Who are we to claim the high ground? With the “liberating” of our society in the sixties, aside from equal rights for women, we got rampant drug use, teenage promiscuity, horrendous high-school drop out rates, increases in teen age crime, and a whole host of by-products that we didn’t anticipate. Now, I am not holding equal rights for women responsible for all those ills, but it is a bit presumptuous to believe that we must thrust our values into another country’s Constitution in order to validate it.

In the end each country must frame their Constitutions in a manner that suits their culture, their values, their history, and their vision for the future. Nearly any Constitution adopted by the Iraqi people would be considered “successful” compared to the barbaric tyranny they have suffered under.

The Oregonian cannot shift the focus away from the primary measurement to a side issue in order to hand the Bush administration a “defeat." Perfection can be the enemy of good enough. There would be no reason to lose the potential for democracy because of squabbling on side issues…including the details of women’s rights provisions. The administration is putting pressure on the Iraqis to adopt a balanced constitution…which we all agree would be optimum, but a failure to meet our standards on this issue, would not render mute the 1800 lives that have been lost to get us this far.