Revolution

Did you happen to catch the History Channel's special on the French Revolution last night, Bush? You'd have found something of interest there, I think. Not that it was a terribly good or deep analysis of an event of extraordinary historical complexity: a couple of hours necessitated a good deal of shorthand thinking and easy answers--like when Marie Antoinette is described as "the Imelda Marcos of her day." Some truth to that, surely. She was by all accounts a mindlessly extravagant person. Even so, she suffered in proportion to her extravagance.

But the whole idea of revolution got me thinking about what you have been trying to pull off in Iraq--because, in a real sense, that's revolution, too. What is revolution but a complete turn of the wheel, the violent overthrow of a demonstrably corrupt regime and its replacement with another, hopefully more enlightened, more humane? Trouble is, I believe that revolution has to come from the hearts of the oppressed themselves, from their passion to make change. In Iraq, you persist in trying to do it for them. The revolution may have been smoldering in the hearts of Iraqis terrified by the Saddam regime, but it had not yet reached boiling point, where their passion for change was such that it could not longer be contained, where they were ready to sacrifice everything, even their own lives, for freedom.

No, it was you, Bush, who were ready to sacrifice their lives--and the lives of Americans. And it was not their vision of a better future. It was yours--your vision of what freedom means, and how it works; your vision of democracy. As I see it, that's why this particular revolution fell apart, and continues to fall apart as we march on toward an election that will be seen by large numbers of Iraqis as anything but the free exercise of democratic rights.

Another thought, this one having to do with the whole notion of karma. One of the lessons of the French Revolution is surely that no one among us is immune from the consequences of the actions that we undertake. It's not so much a question of just desserts, but rather what comes back at us as a result of what we do, and how we do it. Louis XIV and his queen, his family, his court, were not simply brought to justice by those they had cruelly ignored, exploited, scorned, oppressed. They lived out to the full the consequences of their cruelty and indifference, their lack of compassion for those they were given power over. The same with their oppressors, the revolutionaries. Robespierre went full circle in his life, from idealist reformer to autocratic tyrant, and died in the bloody manner he mercilessly prescribed for others. An incredible reversal, packed into the space of a few short years.

I believe we do need to think seriously about our actions, Bush. You have been given a place of special privilege in life, and that privilege has brought you, now, to a lofty place of power--more power, perhaps, than any one human being can, or should rightly hold. You have the greater obligation, then, in that place of privilege, to practice what the Buddhists call "right action": to act in the interests of the weakest of those you hold power over, not simply those you know the best, those closest to you, those most like you--like Louis' aristocrats. But take note of Robespierre, Bush, lest your ideology, like his, should lead you to neglect the greater call of wisdom and compassion. Because your actions will surely bring about results proportionate to the breadth of vision that informs them. And your actions, of all people's, for good or ill, will affect every living being on this planet.