Color me "Neo-con"

Well I have not been able to Blog for a while. I had to go to Baghdad and run around, then I found out I am going home sooner than expected so there has been a lot to do. Yea! Can you believe that, the Army sending someone home early? Well, I am not going to look a gift hoarse.... Any way, I have had several blogs running through my mind but this one came up today. President Bush said at his first interview the following:

"There is a certain attitude in the world, by some, that says that it's a waste of time to try to promote free societies in parts of the world, I just strongly disagree with those who do not see the wisdom of trying to promote free societies around the world. If we are interested in protecting our country for the long-term, the best way to do so is to promote freedom and democracy. And I simply do not agree with those who either say overtly or believe that certain societies cannot be free."

The pundits say that he is taking a "neo-con" tack when he says such things. This is opposed to a "realist" view that says we (the US) should deal with the reality we know instead of the unknown of overthrowing a government and trying to "stand up" a democracy. Does this sound familiar? Yes, Virginia this is the struggle of what the policy over Iraq should have been.

When you wipe away all the hype over the Iraq war, you are left with competing visions of the future. Some people believe (fear would be a better word) the future should not be guided by people with great and expanding vision. President Reagan was a good example. The country had been dealing with the Soviet union, the satellite states with oppressive regimes, the Berlin wall, etc. for almost 40 years by the time Reagan took office. Many on the left (who really liked socialism and communism) wanted at lest the status quo, if not a continued march of communism. What they really, really did not want was a President who was willing to look beyond all this to a new world without Soviet Russia. Reagan used to say he did not see the political spectrum as horizontal (ie left to right) but vertical (up and down). He saw the tyrannical state run communism as an abyss which kept the people down and he wanted to pull them up out of that abyss and give them a chance in the light of freedom. So when he called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" the realist, chicken littles saw the sky falling. My goodness he actually thought he could change the world. Now over twenty years later, the Soviet Union is on the ash heap of history and the Freedom loving United States is the strongest country in the world.

Now we are faced with different challenge but analogies can be drawn. If you look at the world the same way as President Reagan, the people in the middle east need to be pulled out of an abyss of tyranny that has been created by people who have exploited a religion to place/keep those people in oppression. It is not, by far, a religious struggle, although many people frame it that way to gain sympathy for the side opposing the United States. America, through its leadership has never said and does not want to impose any religion on the people of Iraq. All it wants to do is give the people freedom to make all the decisions in their own life, which would include what religion they want to follow. As long as I have been in Iraq, I have never heard even a whisper of "we need to get these heathen....(insert you own epithet)" Everyone has respect for the Islam faith. What they don't have respect for is radicals who have so twisted that faith so as to think they have the will of God to kill other humans for what ever purpose (religion or political power).

President Bush has the broad vision of changing the world. He wants to bring freedom to a people who have lived under oppression for a long period of time. The "realist" want to keep the status quo because they can't see over the horizon whether there is a dawn or sunset. If we stay frozen in fear of the unknown, then we will NEVER see a peaceful world. A fundamental change in the way government is conducted over here must take place to have the possibility of peace. The status quo only resulted in 9/11.