Relativity
The Inalienable Right To Screw Up Your Country
“It was quite amazing to meet President Jalal Talabani, the country’s first elected president, last week. His patience and good humor are extraordinary. What he likes about the new constitution, for example, is that nobody very much likes it—proof that no faction or section, including his own native Kurdistan, is in a position to crow about victory. Talabani is much more than a regional politician: He’s an old lion in his 70s who was well-known in Arab and nationalist and intellectual circles when Gamal Abdel Nasser was still alive. He recalls some of his disagreements with former Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer and grins when he says that Bremer would always exclaim, “That’s your Marxist background coming out again.” What odds would you have given, four years ago, that Iraq would move from being privately owned by a kleptocratic sadist to having a brave, tough, democratic socialist as an elected president? One should be on his side, up or down and win or lose, and one must have the moral fiber to say that the authors of the chaos and misery are not the coalition but the jihadist and Baathist saboteurs who gleefully make war on civilians and on the very concept of society.”