Perfect is the Enemy of Good

Steven Vincent - author of the fascinating book "Into The Red Zone", and the nearly eponymous blog, on the upcoming elections:

Will the Iraqi elections be "free?" Possibly not by the standards of Jimmy Carter or U.N. officials; certainly not the lights of the anti-war camp who, unthreatened by fascist paramilitaries, reactionary psychopaths and random acts of unspeakable violence, make a fetish of their own moral purity. But we, who support this war, should not allow they, who do not, let the perfect defeat the good. What will happen in Iraq on January 30 will not be ideal. It will not be neat or completely satisfactory. But after the horrors the Iraqi people have suffered, and continue to endure, it will be good. Perhaps, like the Emancipation Proclamation, it will be miraculous.

The double standard is indeed yawning.

"Good enough" was good enough for Bill Clinton in Kosovo and Bosnia and Haiti; it eluded him in Rwanda. But only perfection would satisfy Bush's critics in Iraq.

Speaking of imperfect solutions to intractable problems:

We might further pause to consider what happened nearly 150 years ago. How, culminating decades of mounting tension, the rebel shelling of Fort Sumter precipitated a war that nearly destroyed the United States, yet led, with the Union's victory, to the 14th Amendment and the legal--if not practical--abolishment of slavery. We might reflect, as well, on the difficult period of the Reconstruction. Then, as now, a "foreign" army "occupied" a defeated nation; then, as now, hooded paramilitaries called the Ku Klux Klan "resisted" the occupiers and sought to terrorize people back into slavery; then, as now, the process of freedom met numerous setbacks and failures--and to many, the process is not yet complete. We might also ponder the fact, contra the arguments of the anti-war camp, democracy can--and has been--imposed on a recalcitrant population at the point of a gun.

Another parallel: Lincoln never had an "exit strategy" as re the newly-freed slaves; he just freed them. The Iraqi people had been enslaved for thirty years; the Africans in America, 400.

Vincent continues:

The liberation and reconstruction of Iraq is part of a larger conflict against Islamofascism. Just as, say, the Union drive across Tennessee contributed to the demise of slavery, so too victory in Iraq will help roll back the tide of tribal and religious oppression that has gripped the Middle East (often, unfortunately, with our blessing and assistance.) This is another way of saying that at the base of this war lie fundamental concepts of freedom and dignity. Or, to put it more simply, the battle for Iraq's future is a matter of human rights. It is a moral, as much as a military, conflict.

To discredit America's commitment to Iraq, many leftists liken it to Vietnam, knowing full well the chilling effect memories of the Southeast Asian "quagmire" have on public opinion. We should contest their rhetoric with analogies to the Civil War, whose no less chilling memories find noble meaning in the moral imperative of the conflict. The war--never wholly popular in the North--may not have started for the purpose of freeing enslaved peoples, but, guided by Lincoln's vision and eloquence, that's how it ended.

This is brilliant.

You need to read Vincent's book, by the way; it is one of the best books about Iraq I've yet seen.

Posted by Mitch at January 3, 2005 04:40 AM | TrackBack