Tuesday, July 06, 2010
Lessons from a revolution
Roedad Khan
On July 3, 1776, one day before the United States came into being, John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail: “Yesterday, the greatest question ever debated in America was decided, and a greater one, perhaps, never was nor will be decided among men. A Resolution was passed without one Colony’s dissent ‘that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, and as such they have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude peace, establish commerce and do all other acts and things which other states may rightfully do’”. On July 4, 1776, the Congress at Philadelphia adopted the historic Declaration of Independence, drafted mainly by Jefferson. It was the expression of the “American mind”. The time to separate from the mother country had arrived. The umbilical cord had to be cut. The die was cast.
When America was engaged in the most just of struggles, that of a people escaping from another people’s yoke, and when it was a question of creating a new nation in the world, outstanding men came forward to lead the country. Three Americans, George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – all conservative members of the colonial elite turned revolutionaries, set the world ablaze and changed the course of history. These three men, more than any other, helped end British rule. They transformed His Majesty’s American colonies into a Sovereign, independent country.
The preamble of the Declaration asserts that under certain circumstances, revolution is justified. Governments must rest upon “the consent of the governed”, for they are set up to protect certain rights – “Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness”. It was a revolutionary document in the sense that it justified a revolution which had already begun. Years after the colonies had won their independence, John Adams noted that “the revolution was effected before the war commenced. The revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people”. The loyalty of Americans had been undermined by years of struggle and agitation before the first shot was fired at Lexington.
“All men are created equal”, the Declaration asserts but Jefferson and the others were not thinking of those who owned no property or slaves – those who were themselves owned property.
They were not thinking of women either. It took American democracy – the greatest democracy in the world – 86 years to abolish slavery, 144 years to enfranchise women and 189 years to assure the black people the vote! “What to the slave is the Fourth of July”?
The black orator Frederick Douglass would ask in 1852 in an Independence Day oration and would answer that “your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us… You may rejoice. I must mourn”.
At the time of Independence African – Americans accounted for 20 per cent of the entire population of 2.5 million colonists, rising in Virginia to as much as 40 per cent. Jefferson’s attempt to incorporate a paragraph attacking slavery in the Declaration of Independence was struck out by Congress! Today, Obama, an African-American, is the President of the United States of America! A black family occupies the White House. A new dawn had arrived or so we thought. How wrong one can be?
Independent America, it was hoped, would become an “Asylum for mankind”, and offer refuge to the world’s oppressed. Like a shining beacon, America, it was hoped, would herald the “birth of a new world”, the beginning of an epoch in which humankind across the earth could “begin the world over again”. Alas! This was not to be.
The American dream has turned sour. Two hundred years ago, America caught the imagination of the world because of the ideals it stood for. Today its example is tarnished with military adventurism and conflicts abroad. Today America is symbolized not in the Statue of Liberty but the naked black hooded Iraqi man connected with wires setup on a box by his American perpetrators.
The photo of this naked, hooded, wired, Iraqi prisoner, standing on a box after having been told he would be electrocuted if he stepped or fell off, may well become the lasting emblem of this cruel, unjust war, much as the photo of a naked, fleeing, napalmed little girl became the emblem of the Vietnam war.
In the past, some envied America, some liked America, some hated America but almost all respected her. Very few respect America today. They all fear America. Today Muslims perceive America as the greatest threat to the World of Islam since the 13th century.
“One of the great lessons”, British historian Paul Johnston wrote, “is that no civilization can be taken for granted. Its permanency can never be assured. There is always a dark age waiting for you around the corner if you play your cards badly and you make sufficient mistakes”. Today America seems to be experiencing what Toynbee called “the dark night of the soul”.
Today America has lost the high moral ground it once occupied. It stands alone in the comity of nations, forsaken by most of its erstwhile friends and allies. There was a time when great causes pushed America to great heights that would not otherwise be achieved.
That is no longer the case. Before there were three faces of America in the world – the face of Peace Corps, the face of multi-nationals and the face of US military power. The balance has gone wrong lately. And the only face of America the world sees now is the one of military power.
Today free people are not looking to America for guidance in constructing another world order. Today their greatest fear is not America’s withdrawal from the world but its overweening involvement in it. This is certainly not America’s finest hour.
Today American troops are scattered around the world from the plains of Northern Europe to the mountains of Afghanistan and the plains of Iraq in search of a phantom enemy, bombing and killing innocent Afghan and Iraqi men, women and children.
Though it rejects imperial pretensions, it is for all its protestations, perceived in the world as peremptory, domineering and Imperial. Its actions in Afghanistan and Iraq are perceived as part of an open-ended empire-building plan with geo-strategic goals.
Under this plan, the United States would acquire a permanent military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq for projecting its power in central Asia, South Asia, Middle East and the Persian Gulf.
The farewell address of George Washington will ever remain an important legacy for small nations like Pakistan. He cautioned that “an attachment of a small or weak toward a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter”.
The strong might have interests and objectives that could be of little real importance to the weak; but once the latter submitted to acting the role of a satellite, it would find it no easy task to avoid being used as a tool by the strong”.
It is folly in one nation, George Washington observed, to look for disinterested favours from another…it must pay with a portion of its independence and its sovereignty for whatever it may accept under that character. No truer words have been spoken on the subject. If you want to know what happens to a small country which allows itself to be attached to a powerful country like America, well, visit Pakistan.
The writer is a former federal secretary.
Email:
roedad@comsats.net.pk,
www.roedadkhan.com