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Hang together

There is something special about celebrating July 4 in Tripoli.  This is a country that made a revolution only after 42 years of dictatorship.  Watching it prepare for elections July 7 is thrilling, even to an old salt.  I’ll miss the reading of the Declaration of Independence on NPR this morning, especially this portion of the stirring preamble:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

These are the founding principles of the American republic.  I am not by nature a proselytizer.  I think everyone should find their own form of government.  But if you start from these principles, it is hard–pretty much impossible–to come to other than democratic conclusions.

All the revolutions of the Arab spring have to some extent been inspired by similar thinking, but the Libyan and Tunisian ones more than others have been able to fulfill the hope of throwing off absolute despotism.  Egypt experienced something more like a creeping military coup than a revolution.  Yemen is enjoying, if that is the right word, a negotiated transition.  Syria is lost in a civil war.  Sudan (Khartoum) is seeing only the first stirrings of discontent.  Bahrain has put the genie back in the bottle, for the moment.  Other Gulf states have bought off and repressed their protest movements.

It is hard to fault those who decide the weight of oppression is too great to claim the dignity inherent in the idea that all men (and women) are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights.  But if you believe that the premise is true, it is difficult not to want to support those who do decide to take the risk.

In the Libyan case, support came in military form, in response to a threat the dictator posed to Benghazi.  But it is a mistake to believe that this is the only form of support, or even the most effective one.  It is hard for me to imagine how military support to the Syrian rebellion, short of full-scale intervention well beyond the level in Libya, will do much more than widen and worsen the violence.  Someone may get lucky and kill Bashar al Asad, but even then his Alawite sect and its allies will likely continue to fight a war they believe is “existential.” Thinking that way likely makes it so.  It is easy to understand, and impossible to justify, their self-protective abuse of power.

Syrians and others engaged in the fight against tyranny would do well to remember Benjamin Franklin’s injunction at the signing in 1776:

We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.

May we all hang together.