December 15, 2007 12:07 AM GMT
Thanks for reviving this thread, Debbie. I thought it was interesting, nobody else did. Maybe, I didn't put it across very well. The anarchism of the ego asserts that all is good that serves your interests and your interests alone. Hence a violent act committed by an individual is legitimate if it benefits that individual. The State behaves in a similar way whilst criminalising the individual for doing the same. The persecution of minorities can be justified, therefore, if it benefits the majority. Rousseau stated that the perfect society is one in which all people think the same, those who think differently should be executed for the sake of harmony. To do so would benefit everyone else. That is the restriction to which every individual citizen must abide, a workable freedom. This could be a blueprint for Nazi Germany or any other fascist dictatorship. People can live their own lives but must not have dissenting views. One People! One State! One Leader! Totally abhorrent to me but interesting because democracy, as we understand it, is a fairly recent innovation. Yet we accept it as the correct, proper and humane practise of politics; and democratic Governments are quite willing to use violence to preserve it and indeed to impose it on others who neither desire or understand it. In Iraq the people voted strictly upon tribal, ethnic and religious lines. We could just have easily apportioned the seats accordingly. In Russia they vote for a strongman, a new Tsar, a new Stalin.
Iraq will not emerge as a western style democracy. Peace will only be maintained as long as occupation continues. It will probably factionalise and split apart. Much like the old Yugoslavia it can only be maintained as a viable and stable state by being under the control of a strong leader with the suitable levers of state oppression. Without this it can only have a dangerous and destabilising effect on an already volatile region. It is the great irony of toppling Saddam Hussein that he was possibly the lesser of two evils. It is also a great irony of history that the good guys always win.