WP: Let Them Have Their Civil War (stunning piece by novelist Caleb Carr)

[DeepModem Mom]

Let Them Have Their Civil War
By Caleb Carr
Sunday, April 9, 2006; Page B01

.... Our Civil War was viewed as an exercise in horrendously destructive national suicide by most of the nations of Europe -- and an expensive one at that, for it cut off European textile mills from Southern cotton. Britain and one or two of her fellow members in the European balance of power considered intervening -- but intervention was averted, mostly through the careful warnings of President Abraham Lincoln and his diplomatic corps. They stressed that civil war in America was a more morally complex affair than the usual European grab for power. It was, at its heart, a contest to end the institution of slavery.

If the Europeans found its violence deplorable and horrifying, said Lincoln, that was understandable; so did he. But as he explained in his second inaugural address, in words that we revere so deeply that we have carved them into his memorial....

***

Iraqis may refer to their Lord by a different name, but the principle in their case is the same. We are not dealing with several groups of roughly equal recent experience; we are dealing with one extreme minority, the Sunnis, many of whom have for years, under the leadership of the worst international tyrant since Pol Pot, persecuted and murdered the other two -- on a genocidal scale.

As Americans, we cannot condone mass murder as a form of vengeance. But every time an American official tries to tell the Shiites and the Kurds (along with the many smaller minorities in Iraq) that they are not entitled to the same judgments and justice as we ourselves received and wrought from 1861 to 1865, they make civil war in that country more -- not less -- likely. Such statements reveal the blatantly paternalistic, even racist, opinion that what was necessary in the American experience is not something for which the Iraqis are ready or qualified....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/07/AR2006040702031.html?nav=hcmodule

[Mythsaje]

1. He's a great author...

I really enjoyed his book "The Alienist" and the one sequel I've read.

[C_U_L8R]

2. Oh - for a brief moment I thought

this would be about OUR civil war...
the one that could be coming down
between reich wing extremists
and rational thinking people.

But it looks like the enemy is imploding
before a single shot was fired... phew.

As for Iraq... the Bush admin should go there
and not come back until they fix their mess