What drove Nietzsche mad?
Friedrich Nietzsche is the German philosopher of power, a story was told about him when he saw a man beating his horse to make it pull a coach, but the horse didn’t move. The man continued beating his horse which led Nietzsche to interfere and shout at the man hysterically asking him to stop punishing the poor animal- It was told that this incident drove Nietzsche mad because it clearly shows that power without policy does not achieve the desired goal, since he defended the use of power all his life. This is the story many of us heard when we were children, now we know the story may not be historically accurate but it is still useful to make a point Here it serves as an introduction to the subject of political coercion, which we suffered from and still do in ways not very clear to non-Iraqis. Coercion removes responsibility from the victim, in Islam the forbidden becomes kosher under pressure of coercion, but the scenes of our political reality have a lot of disregard over coercion when we all know it was the real reason for our deeds.
Debaathification is an idea of revenge which could not be rationalized except by the need to clean the slate for Iraqis coming from outside in order to occupy high administrative positions which, at the time, were occupied by personnel with qualifications and long experience and who’s only apparent fault is to succumb to coercion to join a political party and who, for the most part, did not commit crimes and did not get anything more than what they were qualified to earn with their performance and experience. Now, five years after the start of debaathification and many Iraqis from outside Iraq came to high positions and gone, the only remaining possible justification is revenge. But we get surprised sometimes by official uncalculated debaathification positions which do not serve stability and always reminding us that the process is still alive and that guilt is still passed by association as was practiced by Saddam the dictator.
The worst part of debaathification is its continuation until the present; it acts in opposition to progression by aging which allows for overcoming painful history and the building of a different future. Continuation of debaathification means maintaining the priority of perceived guilt in the distant past and allows for cover up of more recent ones, the loss of present resources and weakening of the institutions of the state in the future.
Debaathification is one of the bitter fruits of the Neoconservatives, who allowed for its activation and support. Its latest incarnation has all the authority and pitfalls of its predecessor: No real oversight, the same authority of judge and jury and no amount of press criticism on its own is likely to change the situation, therefore we appeal to the administration of President Barack Obama to define its position vise-a-vise debaathification and its continuation under different names, we hope that their position is different from the previous administration in accepting the responsibility and not to download it to the parties who benefit from debaathification in the first place.