Tom Oliphant, Peter Galbraith and the Restoration of Hope
Saturday, September 30, 2006
As the races accross the country hit warp speed, the mud is being slung with ferocity. Such is the business, I suppose. But it leaves me disillusioned, though not to the point at which I'll fail to participate or pay any attention. The week started with Clinton's anger and further destruction of George Allen's character. I'm not for a second asserting that either was necessarily unjustified. In my opinion, Clinton's outburst was inspiring and the Allen stories are an unfortunate necessity. But what a drag politics in the new century have become!
I'm a liberal right now because the war in Iraq frightens me -- if i'm not totally in denial about it's existence. The state of our environment is depressing. I believe in helping people. My challenge is to figure out if I can do that in the political arena while at the same time maintaining sanity and emotional balance. I want to give it a shot right now by writing about something I heard this week from Tom Oliphant about Iraq on the Al Franken show.
Oliphant was talking about Peter Galbraith's plan for Iraq. The plan involves helping the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis partition the country and calls for each group to elect their own government. The country would become a loose federation. The plan isn't perfect. The issues of foreign jihadists and how to police Baghdad are tricky, but Oliphant was studying them and talking about them.
But it wasn't the plan that impressed me, I'd read about it before. What impressed me is what Oliphant said about the nature of the discussion regarding Iraq. He said, and I'm paraphrasing -- that we need to stop thinking about Iraq in terms of winning and losing. We need, instead, to think about doing the right thing. Wow.
Now I'm not saying I know what the right thing is. I don't even think Oliphant claims to know. I was simply impressed by the humility with which the words were spoken. I like Oliphant because he studies issues carefully and speaks humbly. There's not alot of that kind of stuff in politics right now. If this blog can bring those qualities to the table, then I'll be proud to be a part of it.
posted by The Angry Progressives @ 11:44 AM,
