Witness to the Execution

As my local, neighborhood Internet expert I tend to get requests for this kind of thing.  Initially, I refused. After many requests, eventually I found the damned thing and watch it, I did.  I won't post the link.

Apparently taken via cell phone, the clip takes over where US TV leaves off.  The rope is around his neck. The shouts in Arabic continue. The trap door falls.  The body drops.  The room shifts and in "Blair Witch", mobile, cinematography you get a millisecond glimpse of the face of the dead dictator.  

It's haunting.

While I wish I'd never seen it, that dark moment sheds light on the current state of our national soul.  It shows the the need for real leadership in the post-Iraq War world.

In the vacuum created by the moral fall of Conservatism and it's most successful leader, George W. Bush, history is calling for Progressives to provide the principled leadership necessary for America to face the future. All we need to do is stand up and fight for the core principles that have always made America great.
I happened to watch the clip at 12:15am on New Year's morning.  Up to that point, I'd been enjoying a rousing party with friends and watching the ball drop in Times Square on NBC.

In the minute leading up to midnight, John Lennon's Imagine played to the Times Square throng, sending a rare sense of humanity deep in to the mass of revelers.  No less a party boy than Carson Daly (When did he become the face of American youth?), was forced to comment on the "reflective" mood of the crowd in the moments after midnight.

Why did America choose this moment, the last of 2006, to suddenly reflect on its own soul?  Why did America face a new year with questions rather than assertions, with humanity, with heart.  Why did America enter 2007 searching?

It was with these questions on my mind that I became a witness to the execution of Saddam Hussein and therein found my answer.

This tawdry little piece of history amounts to the world's single most expensive vendetta document: 3,000 dead soldiers, at least 20,000 injured, 600,000 dead civilians, $300Bn spent, the Dollar now trails the Euro as the world's #1 currency.  That's expensive.  It drained our spirit as much as our treasury.

For six long years, Americans bought into an illusion of the American dream.  That illusion cloaked bigotry, belligerent nationalism, revenge, singular action, violence, and the cancerous belief that dollars are more important than respect.  Since Katrina and through 2006, Americans have woken up to face reality, and we're still not sure we like what we see. 

A decrepit Republican Congress forced us to see single-party hegemony degrade into corruption.  Katrina forced us to face the inhumanity of "You're On Your Own (tm)" conservatism.  Iraq exposed the limits of American military power. Abu Garib, Guantanamo, Unconstitutional Wiretapping, torture, and the suspension of Habeas Corpus made us question the certitude of our moral compass. 

After decades of growing faith in Conservatism and a half decade of it's fulfillment in the Bush fantasy, the illusion dispersed, and America in 2006 voted for leadership that would finally face reality.

If Americans were reflective on the eve of the new year it was because we have recently found that there is no glory in vengeance, that living alone is not the American dream, and that there must be some other driver for the future besides fear.

Now the time has come for new leadership in America. 

Leading in to the new year, the America public is strongly behind the Democratic agenda, but that agenda is merely a set of policies. It addresses a scant handful of negotiable issues.  It doesn't express core values. It doesn't provide an over-arching, long-term, vision of what America is and what it must be in order to lead the world in the 21st Century.

Through these years, America may have lost its way, but America retains its spirit, its values, its soul. 

There will be greater leaders than myself who will embody a great vision for this nation and for the world.  We can be sure that those leaders will be devoted to principles of fairness, respect, and integrity as all of America's great leaders always have been.

As the War in Iraq inevitably winds down, America will enter a post-war era.  As Arnold Toynbee points out, all historical periods are post-war periods.  There is an opportunity and a need for true leadership in America. 

Leadership is based on core principles.  Leaders abandon ideology and fantasy.  The discipline of Reality demands that we face the real challenges in the post-war world with authentic courage, together.

There is an opportunity arising for leaders to stand and fight for the future.  The post-war era will be defined by the values that have made America a great nation. 

Those values are Progressive values, and those leaders will be Democrats.

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