A free Iraq -- if you can keep it

Comment by PETER CRESSWELL*

"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains."

Not true. Not everywhere. Not in Baghdad - not any longer.

The veil has been lifted from the population; the doubters, naysayers and prophets of gloom, doom and calumny have proven only to have the vision of an ox. The promise of freedom awaits the people.

What will they do with the freedom they now have?

Loot? Kill? Rampage? Is that freedom?

Are they to replace the shafts of tyrannical government with the strife of mob-rule and random violence? Have they been freed from the chains of tyrannical government only to replace it with a different form of tyranny, a dreadful war of all against all?

Freedom from tyrannical government must be seen as only one step in their journey of liberty. The next step must be to free themselves from the tyranny of anarchy, and of the rampant gangsterism and destruction that anarchy always brings.

And they must also free themselves from a tyranny of the soul, a tyranny wherein each man looks to each other man for guidance rather than into his own soul, a tyranny wherein a mullah dictates one's rules for living, rather than looking to one's own thinking, reasoning brain for guidance.

Anarchy, threatening to cut loose and destroy Iraq's revolution-from-above, is already being tamed by Iraq's liberators. But an older threat has emerged anew from liberated Basra, a stale, musty threat speaking of millennia of religious oppression and violence, a voice again demanding the foot of religion on the throat of those who would be free.

If it is a free nation that Iraqis are now to build and keep - if freedom is to be the leitmotif of Iraq in years to come - then it is the tyranny of religion and religious oppression that must truly be tamed.

For it is not up into the heavens that man must look for guidance. He will not find his path in the dark of the mosque, nor in the shadows of the cathedral, nor in the words of dead prophets.

For to be free from the tyranny of government and of anarchy both, to be truly free of both these destroyers, is really to be free from the tyranny of others - others who seek to impose their will on us by force.

It is the job of law, if law is to mean anything, to allow each individual to be free from the forced impositions of others; to allow each individual to follow the path he himself has chosen. But if such freedom is to last, it is then up to each individual to truly free themselves.

There will be many battles to come in Iraq. With a will those battles will be played out without bloodshed and violence.

There will be battles to institute a rule of law, in order to protect one human being from another. There will (hopefully) be battles to introduce a constitution, in order to protect each human being from their government.

There will be battles to liberate women from the routine oppression they face in the Arab world; to instate laws to protect property and contracts, (as rare in the Arab world as oppression is now common); and to protect freedom of religion, in order that a new form of state-worship not be imposed by a new theocracy.

Important as each of these things is, there is a bigger battle, one that will signal victory or failure for each of these other battles. It is truly the battle for civilisation - it is in many respects the story, the drama of civilisation itself - and for some years to come it will once again be played out on the canvas on which civilisation began: in the fields, deserts, villages and towns of what was once called Mesopotamia, and is now called Iraq.

It is a battle to determine whether individuals will be able to set themselves free from all their masters - religious, ethnic, political - and to bring into being a new thing in the world, a peaceful, prosperous and free people - or whether the old temptations of mysticism, mob rule and violence will hold sway.

It is a battle waged in each of our souls every day; it is the battle to be individual, to be ourselves.

"Civilisation," Ayn Rand reminds us, "is the setting free of man from men," the setting free of the individual from the mob.

If individuals are to be set free in Iraq, if civilisation is to return to the very place of its birth, then it is the chains of other-worship Iraqis must shake off. It is individualism and the rule of law they must embrace.

Two hundred and twenty years ago, a group of individuals gathered in Philadelphia to enact the principles that would throw off their own political chains; to permanently enshrine - they hoped - the principle that each individual had the rights to life, to liberty, and to the pursuit of property and happiness. Asked by an observer what new form of government this Constitutional Convention had given the country, Benjamin Franklin replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it!"

If the new drama in ancient Mesopotamia is to bring a permanent liberty in Iraq - a freedom that Iraqi individuals can keep - then each will have to shake off his own shackles, his chains tying him to a stale musty past.

It is a drama with interest for each of us, for it is our own drama - the story of liberty itself.

* Peter Cresswell is an Auckland architect and member of the Libertarianz.

Herald Feature: Iraq war