<"One man or woman, one vote" is a fundamental human right, as essential as the right to free speech, the right to freely petition the government for redress, the right to due process, the right to free assembly, and other freedoms.>
I agree. But, what I see our army doing in Iraq now, is akin to what the Union Army did in Louisiana after the Civil War. In Reconstruction, Blacks were formally given all those rights. But it was a boon, bestowed on them by an occupying foreign army. So it didn't "take". Freedom for Southern Blacks could not be sustained by Northern Whites. By the mid-1870s, Blacks in the South were no more free than they had been before the Civil War. Freedom didn't happen, until it was seized and defended by the oppressed themselves, beginning in the 1950s. There is no other lasting basis, for any group to become free, other than through their own efforts, in their own way, when they are ready. |
