Comparing Iraqis to ’60s Blacks Is a Stretch
James P. Pinkerton
August 12, 2003
Have you heard about the latest civil-rights issue? It's the war in Iraq. That's the argument put forth by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and, given her position of influence, attention must be paid.
Yes, it may seem strange that the current Southern- dominated Republican Party, which came to power starting in the late '60s on a "backlash" platform of opposition to the liberal and integrationist Great Society agenda, is now claiming the civil-rights mantle. Indeed, the GOP today is the mirror image of the party of Lincoln. The old-line Abolitionist states in New England and the Midwest are mostly Democratic, while Republicans dominate such once-Confederate states as Mississippi, Florida and, of course, George W. Bush's Texas.
In a speech last Thursday to the National Association of Black Journalists, Rice said that America must make a "generational commitment" to the task of transforming not only Iraq but the entire Middle East. Her remarks garnered headlines because they dramatically extended the time horizon of Americas's Iraq engagement. Not so long ago, we were told that we'd be there for a few months. Now, it's looking like a few decades.
So in the meantime, as public support for the effort falls, Rice has taken it upon herself to define American involvement as "the moral mission of our time." Recalling her own background as a child growing up in Alabama during the most tumultuous period of the civil-rights movement, she derided "condescending voices" who argue that Iraqis and Arabs are not ready for American-style freedom. "We've heard that argument before," she told the black journalists, "and we more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it. The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and the rest of the Middle East." And, one supposes, by that logic, Bush is the equivalent of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, a compassionate man willing to use federal force to keep the peace and open up schools and polling places.
Rice's claims are, to put it mildly, a stretch. In the '60s, Southern blacks - who were, after all, U.S. citizens - were truly "jubilant" to see federalized troops in Dixie, smiting Jim Crow, because they wanted their piece of the American Dream. By contrast, it's not so clear that ordinary Arabs are pleased to see us in their midst. The jubilation one sees on TV these days is Iraqis whooping it up after an American Humvee is ambushed.
And, of course, African-Americans have long rejected the idea that fighting foreign wars equals advancing civil rights at home. In the '60s, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. opposed the Vietnam War, continuing a long line of pacifism among black leaders. Last year, 32 of the 37 members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against the administration's war resolution. In March, just as fighting started, a Gallup Poll found that just 29 percent of blacks supported the conflict, compared to 78 percent of whites.
Indeed, about the only prominent American blacks who support the Iraq crusade are Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell. But words from a high-placed woman have consequences. Rice's decision to invoke the moral weight of the '60s civil- rights movement on behalf of Iraq will likely guide policy for years to come.
Yet one might wonder: What will happen if the U.S. government repositions Arabs as victims, rather than aggressors - in Iraq, and also, maybe, in the Palestinian areas? The most obvious answer is that such a view will lead to shifts in American strategy. After all, just a few years ago, the United States attempted to subdue Iraq through strangling economic sanctions. Post- Rice, surely we wouldn't do that again. That is, we wouldn't wish to further victimize the "victims." Indeed, if we regard Arabs as "needy," then presumably the spigots of American aid will be opened, just as they were during the Great Society '60s.
Thus the irony: Today's Republican Party, which came to power decades ago in opposition to free-spending liberalism, is today poised to re-create the all-embracing nanny state - in Arab states.
Copyright © 2003, Newsday, Inc.
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