By PLS
Northerners swallowed slavery to keep the fledgling United States together in the 1780s. It was not a happy compromise for many New Englanders. There was the unsavory sacrifice of principle entailed in allowing slavery to continue within the bounds of the United States. There was also the ugly business of allowing to be counted for voting purposes those very slaves who had no civil rights. In this way, the slave South gained disproportionate power and influence in a country that some felt should be united at any cost.
Sixty years later a Civil War had to be fought to free those slaves and keep the country together on a tenable human rights basis. But once again it was the South that really won. Parties in a politically split north needed Southern allies. They could not alienate the South. Reconstruction was abandoned, and Jim Crow kept the supposedly free blacks in thrall for nearly another century.
To this day the whole country remains in hock to the spirit of the rural south. It’s a drag on civil rights, on human rights, on women’s rights, on necessary adjustments to modern times.
So maybe Iraq is better off to have its civil war now. Maybe it’s better if the country fragments into three. Consider North America. Canada’s doing fine. The North might have done much better without the South.
The Bush administration promised that the war in Iraq would lead to a realignment of power in the Middle East.
That’s probably happening, but not according to the neo-con script. Surprise. Surprise.