TYRANNY>LIBERAL REVOLUTION>TYRANNY:

The twilight of tyrants: And the promise of liberal revolution (Paul Berman, 4/13/2003, Boston Globe)

THE TUMBLING STATUE of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad last Wednesday did look like something out of the revolutions of 1989, and this resemblance ought to plunge us into thought. A thousand experts have told us that, by fighting in Afghanistan and now in Iraq, America has thrown itself into the clash of civilizations, and that reality in the Muslim world bears very little in common with reality in the West. Even so, that falling statue looked exactly like one of those colossal statues of Lenin and the other Communist leaders that used to stand guard in public plazas all over Eastern Europe.

There is a reason for this. Saddam's Ba'ath Party has always claimed to be restoring the ancient national glory of the Arab people, from the glory days of the Caliphate of the seventh century, when the Arab Empire was on the march. But the Ba'ath is not, in fact, an ancient Arab institution. The party was founded in Damascus in 1943 on the basis of doctrines from the 1920s and `30s, which were subsequently updated to include a number of doctrines from later times, as well. These ideas were pretty much Mussolini's and those of the extreme right in Europe, mixed with a few ideas from the Stalin era of Soviet communism and given a distinctly Arab varnish. The iconography of Saddam's Ba'ath looks like the iconography of modern Western totalitarianism because that is, in fact, exactly what it is.

The modern age has been the age of totalitarianism, but it has also been the age of totalitarianism's demise. In one country after another, totalitarianism's overthrow has led to scenes of statue-toppling and dancing crowds-scenes of revolution. And so, it is natural to wonder if revolution is the scene before our eyes in Baghdad, too-if we are observing not just the superficial fact of a tyrant's fall or what is cynically called ''regime change,'' but the deeper reality of a growth in human freedom, the beginning of a revolution for the liberal values of individual and minority rights, the rule of law, tolerance, and justice.

This is a question for the long haul, not just for today. […]

Some people have worried about something even more dangerous-that a renewed hubris might take hold of the leaders in Washington, a further twist on the arrogance that drove away some of America's potential allies in the months before the war. In the wake of military victory, the US government could succumb to the wildest fantasies of omnipotence, a trigger-happy impulse to fight wars on a thousand fronts or an imperial disdain for the newly freed Iraqis. These worries strike me as entirely realistic.

Let us fear, then. But let us also remember that, at moments like this, every possibility is still in play-the worst, but also the best: the road that leads to Yugoslavia, as well as the road to Poland. Iraq could go either way right now. So let us hope, too. Let us press for greater American involvement, a more generous budget, an all-is-forgiven attitude that welcomes and even requests support from the rest of the world-a big campaign of reconstruction and not a small one.

Building a society of greater freedom than ever before in Iraq, a safer society for its own people and its neighbors and (not least) for us in far-away America-this possibility does exist, even if not in a fairyland version. There is a two-word name for this possibility: liberal revolution. If falling statues of tyrants are a familiar symbol to us, that is because, in modern times, more-or-less successful revolutions have also become familiar. And now let us get ready for the long haul.

Mr. Berman manages to make it an entire column without attacking George Bush, so that’s a positive. The negative is his failure to recognize that totalitarianism is but the final expression of liberalism. If you focus only on freedom and the state you end up with only the state and a people demanding that their fellow citizens be restrained, leading to the loss of freedom, a process well underway in the EU which he seeks to involve in building a new Iraq. Posted by Orrin Judd at April 13, 2003 1:44 PM