“Person of the Year,” TIME stipulates, “is an annual issue that features a profile on the man, woman, couple, group, idea, place, or machine that—for better or worse—has most influenced events in the preceding year.”
My Person of the Year flouts TIME’s criteria. He has not “influenced events in the preceding year”; he has been irreparably influenced by events beyond his control. He has not triumphed over adversity, for how can he? To do so, he’d have to be super powerful, like a Super Power. He’d have to be someone with a say; someone whose vote actually counts. He’d have to be wealthy; stupendously strong; immune to daisy cutters, cluster bombs, RPGs, and IEDs.
My Person of the Year is the Common Iraqi.
Yes, it is misguided to celebrate victims. But then I am not celebrating The Average Iraqi. I’m suggesting that he serve as a symbol for the ravages visited by the state. He has constituted collateral damage for two administrations. And he’ll continue to be a pawn in the grubby hands of whoever seizes power in that failed state.
The Average Iraqi’s vote is not a triumph over adversity; it’s a victory over reality, for it is folly to equate freedom with symbols, and rhetoric with reality. Casting a vote to give someone power does not make a man free; freedom is the knowledge that even if one doesn’t perform that ritual, nobody can exercise power over one’s life, liberty, and property.
The Average Iraqi is a tragic hero, not a Randian hero. His image should be seared in the minds of men with a conscience. He is the repository of state evil; first Saddam, and then a faraway president and his Revolutionary Assembly sealed his fate without his consent.
Category Archives: Iraq
‘Due Process’ For A Despot
Now that this burlesque of justice is branded ‘made-in-America,’ it’s a Mark of Cain on all of us
Now that we’ve established a constitutional government in Iraq, the rule of law, and a judiciary capable of Nuremberg and Tokyo-type prosecutions, no less, we can sit back and observe the 6th Amendment applied in Baghdad.
Duly, Saddam Hussein is enjoying a “speedy and public trial”—he was brought to trial a mere two years after capture. The trial is public only in the sense that we know it is underway. Paula Zahn is too busy reporting on her latest colonoscopy to dispatch a legal analyst to publicize the proceedings. (Her staff is probably too scared to go, though.) Zahn’s cable cohort, for different reasons, has confined its coverage to bad-mouthing the righteous former Attorney General, Ramsey Clark. These TV titmice believe being on Saddam’s sparse defense team is the same as “supporting” him.
I believe that under American-style justice the accused also has a right “to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation.” Hussein has only recently been formally charged. As the trial commenced, so Hussein’s attorneys—well, those still alive (two defense lawyers have already been killed, another wounded)—had to request time to study the charges against their clients.
As to Hussein’s right to confront the witnesses against him—would that the Iraqis on the so-called stand were merely swaddled in abayas. Those not too frightened to testify (three men and two women, so far) were hidden behind screens, their voices modulated.
Look, prior to Bush’s invasion, I didn’t give a tinker’s toss what Iraqis did to Saddam. He was their baggage. But now that this burlesque of justice is branded ‘made-in-America,’ it’s a Mark of Cain on all of us
Incidentally, we were told until recently that Saddamites are behind the insurgency. But those behind the slaying of Saddam’s attorneys are probably Shiite—it has even been alleged members of the Iraqi “government” are involved. Yes, this is what chaos looks like. Once a rogue state; Iraq is now a failed one, where any faction that imagines its wishes are being frustrated goes out and kills its foes. Freedom is on the march.
It’s Those Seventy Chippendale Dancers That Await in Hell
Driven or exploited? Depending on which story you hear, failed Iraqi suicide bomber Sajida Rishawi is either a pawn of a patriarchal society or a criminal who conned herself into a corner as tight as the corset of explosives she failed to detonate. Books that belabor the “Three P’s”—patriarchy, poverty, and powerlessness—to varying degrees abound. There’s Christoph Reuter’s My Life Is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing, Barbara Victor’s Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers, and Jessica Stern’s Terror in the Name of God, and more. It’s a growth industry. Murray N. Rothbard got it right in “Hutus vs. Tutsis: “In dealing with crime, he wrote, “liberals are concentrating on the wrong root causes. That is, on ‘poverty’ or ‘child abuse’ instead of a rotten immoral character.
It's Those Seventy Chippendale Dancers That Await in Hell
Driven or exploited? Depending on which story you hear, failed Iraqi suicide bomber Sajida Rishawi is either a pawn of a patriarchal society or a criminal who conned herself into a corner as tight as the corset of explosives she failed to detonate. Books that belabor the “Three P’s”—patriarchy, poverty, and powerlessness—to varying degrees abound. There’s Christoph Reuter’s My Life Is a Weapon: A Modern History of Suicide Bombing, Barbara Victor’s Army of Roses: Inside the World of Palestinian Women Suicide Bombers, and Jessica Stern’s Terror in the Name of God, and more. It’s a growth industry. Murray N. Rothbard got it right in “Hutus vs. Tutsis: “In dealing with crime, he wrote, “liberals are concentrating on the wrong root causes. That is, on ‘poverty’ or ‘child abuse’ instead of a rotten immoral character.