Which US?

At the University of Iowa Antiwar Committee's showing last night of "The Ground Truth" -- you can and should see it online at http://informationclearinghouse.info/article15319.htm -- there was an interesting discussion about what the U.S. now owes to the Iraqi people, and whether that debt requires us to "stay and fix what we broke."

A man in the audience asked what I thought was a provocative and useful question: After 9/11, how would Americans have reacted if Osama bin Laden and the Taliban insisted on stationing their troops in New York and Washington to rebuild the towers and the Pentagon? Wouldn't we have preferred them just to leave and let us rebuild on our own? Take it one step further. Would we have been receptive to the idea that they could instruct us on what form of government we should adopt, what kind of society we should have?

Even to ask this sort of question requires a core belief that other people are fundamentally like ourselves, and that is not a belief widely shared by Americans about Arabs and Muslims. Like Asians during America's last military fiasco, Arabs and Muslims supposedly "don't value human life" the way "we" do. They "don't believe in freedom." They "reject modernity." By definition, "They" are not like "Us."

Like the man who asked the question, I don't belong to such an "Us." I belong to the "us" of ordinary people of any nation, any race--any religion or none. We are people who want justice, peace, and freedom to live in the ways we choose for ourselves. We have finally learned that war doesn't work and that one can't change people's minds by killing them. Through the hard experience undergone by our brothers and sisters in Iraq--both soldiers and civilians--we are evolving beyond the narrow-minded, short-sighted, tight-fisted oligarchies who rule over us. I pledge allegiance to that "us."