who is committing all the criminal and political violence?
The Iraqis, of course.
That's a good point. Of course, there are also Iraqis who are banding together to proect their communities. It's sort of like the post-Civil War west, isn't it?
At first blush this seems to be a society with little or no sense of responsibility or accountability. .
I wouln't go that far. Would you say that the riots of the 60s meant that we were a society with no sense of responsibility or accountability? Or the Seattle riots just two or three years ago? The actions of a group of society can't be used to condemn a whole society. I suspect that the average Iraqi is about as responsible as the average American. Purely a guess, but I've seen nothing to challenge that guess.
And that's not just a
byproduct of living under a dictator, that's an easy excuse
When an entire generation has been raised on the reality that fear and naked power are the reasons for obedience, it's not surprising that when all symbols of authority are gone, the people have never learned to substitute their own self-control for external control. Self-control is a learned, not a natural, behavior. If a whole generation has never learned it, how do you expect them to learn it overnight? That's an overstatement, of course, but I think there's some validity in it.
You're right about the power of editors, of course. And they, in turn, are controlled by the financial powers who realize that the purpose of their newspapers and magazines and TV stations isn't first and foremost to report the news, but to sell newspapers and magazines and TV ads. And nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the people or catering to their basest desires. |
