Freedom Takes Time
By Peter and Helen Evans (05/20/03)
While having lunch at the “Hawk ‘n’ Dove” here in Washington, DC, we overheard a man sneer, "It was easy enough to bomb the Hell out of Iraq, but it won't be so easy to impose democracy!" We half-expected to hear the ‘quagmire’ word, but it was just implied.
It's truly amazing what thoughtless things people say. First of all, of course, no one can impose democracy -- duh! Then it wouldn't be democracy. All we can do is pull the weeds (and hopefully the seeds) of tyranny, provide a structure, lay the basis for law and order and free elections and let the people have at it. Democracy, by its very nature, is messy. It's easier to predict what will happen in a dictatorship or a socialist government, because you don't have the ‘mess’ of free markets, free speech or free elections. So, Dear Sir, no, we can't impose democracy.
Next, we're surprised that anyone even imagines that change doesn't require upheaval, disorientation and discomfort. Take a recent event in our own lives, for example. Helen injured her knee. When it became obvious that it wasn’t going to heal on its own, she decided to undergo surgery to repair it.
Ordinarily, three deep cuts into the knee would be considered an injury, but those surgical interventions were what was required to get at and correct the problem within the knee. Does anyone see a correlation to military intervention in Iraq?
After four months of learning to accommodate the pain and limitations by hobbling around, she now has to learn a whole new way to walk after the surgery. It's the "right" way to walk, but after learning the way of accommodation for so long, it requires physical therapy and conscious attention not to fall into the old physical habit of favoring her ‘bad’ knee. Should she be complaining about the ‘authoritarian’ bandages that were necessary for the first week after the surgery? What about the ‘enforced’ discipline of keeping her leg up and her knee iced? And those ‘prescribed’ drugs? It was all necessary until the leg had sufficiently healed from the painful, but necessary, invasion by surgical instruments.
We're hearing the media people fretting that some Iraqis had to go without electricity and water for a few days or weeks during the war. Gee, wouldn't it be nice to have a war where no one was disturbed? What planet do these people live on, who ask these questions? Sorry, life just doesn’t work that way. Have they never gotten a new job, moved to a new city? It may not be surgery, but one has to ‘destroy’ or, more mildly, get rid of the old and learn to live with the new. It takes compromise, sometimes living without their usual comforts and habits; but that's life.
Merely asking these questions reveals the questioner’s attitude toward life. They don't want disruptions; they don't want to be inconvenienced; they don’t want to have to work at life. None of us welcome pain or disruption, but we realize they are part of life and we make the best of them.
So, get real you guys; life is compromise and change takes time.
(Printer friendly version) Email: Peter and Helen Evans
