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Thanksgiving:
From the moment hardy New Englanders proclaimed a
day, nearly four centuries ago, to celebrate
Providence, Americans have known it at least
inchoately: Freedom and gratitude go together.
But gratitude for what? Today we may be grateful for
retractable landing gear that works. Or for finding
a spare vacuum cleaner belt just hours before
holiday guests arrive. We keep flying and
socializing because of such mundane matters.
So the faith that certain things will work propels
us onward. Our daily decisions, small or large, are
uncoerced, bidden by expectations of growth and
happiness. Sometimes we undertake difficult tasks,
not in anticipation of reward, but because they are
right.
In such cases, we are truly rewarded.
Just last week we noticed a television spot
sponsored by Kurdistan, whose minuscule budget
purchased such little time it could not have been
widely watched by Americans. For 30 seconds the
Kurds expressed their joy, and their gratitude.
To Americans. For their freedom.
Kurdistan, bluntly, was targeted by Iraq's Saddam
Hussein for extinction. He gassed whole villages of
these nuisance ethnics, leaving multitudes of
gasping bodies lying in dusty streets, their corpses
destined for mass graves. Thousands of others he
killed through more conventional methods.
Today, as their delegates work out a constitutional
relationship with Sunnis and Shiites in greater
Iraq, Kurds live, dream and make personal choices in
a comparatively tranquil state of their own.
American forces — young men and women who
volunteered for duty, some dying — made the Kurds'
new freedom possible.
As our politicians and media activists debate the
U.S. role in Iraq, they might pause this long
weekend to meditate on America's essential
selflessness. They might offer thanks for a country
that seeks to extend freedom to tyrannized lands
around the world.
Reality may dictate that we cannot liberate every
oppressed nation, as the anti-war crowd taunts, but
maybe we can help those within our strategic
interest and reach.
We cannot keep our own freedom if we do not strive
to extend it.
That is why — not just on Thanksgiving Day — we must
remind ourselves of the singular importance of
America. Informed by a tested philosophy that places
human liberty above mere politics or power, America
remains humanity's best hope. If that philosophy
fails here, darkness falls across the globe.
If anything, we should thank the Kurds — for
thanking us. It reminds us that American influence
is a force for good in the world — a powerful,
positive influence for freedom.
Much of our culture may seem frivolous. (Why do we
need robotized cats, anyway?) But even our frivolity
betokens our inventiveness and our freedom, planted
here as if by intelligent design, by cosmic mirth, a
lure and an inspiration to the world's oppressed.
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