To hear George W. Bush tell it, the Iraqis attacking American troops are either remnant supporters of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime or maniacal Islamic militants, bent on destruction of all things Western. “They hate us for our freedom,” Mr. Bush says. Do you think that’s really the case? Whenever Mr. Bush gives that line, he reminds me of my mother, many years ago, trying to explain why other children picked on me. “They’re just jealous,” she’d say. She meant well, but her words never seemed to ring true. Mr. Bush’s words don’t ring true either, and I don’t think he means well.

There’s the official line, which flows from the White House or the barricaded Green Zone headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad. There are plenty of other points of view, widely disseminated. Freedom of speech looms large among those freedoms we are allegedly hated for and yet – it feels as if there are topics we’re not discussing, ideas we’re keeping to ourselves. It sometimes feels our national debate is only so large and if George Bush pulls his end of the spectrum further into unreality, the rest of us get tugged in that direction, too.
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When I was growing up in Western New York, if a family had a small retreat on a lake for fishing or weekend getaways, it was called a “cottage.” My Uncle John had a cottage on Lake Ontario; an unheated, uninsulated, summertime-only cottage built in the years after World War One.

In Vermont, such structures are called “camps” and have different adjectives, depending on their location. “Deer camp” is in the woods; “fish camp” is at the lake. Vermont fish camps remind me of Uncle John’s cottage – wooden structures, elegant in their simplicity, with screened porches and bright yellow bug lights outdoors. Tall white pines, 80 or 90 years old tower at the corner of the building, just as they did at Uncle John’s in Summerville. The camps are strictly blue-collar establishments, on small lots, perhaps an eighth of an acre, 30 feet of road frontage at one end and 30 feet of shoreline at the other.
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I’m writing this week from Costa Rica, the only non-militarized country in the Western Hemisphere. In 1948, following a five-week civil war, Costa Rica dissolved its army (it had lost the war to a band of rebel upstarts). At the same time, the nation launched a political experiment unique to the region. It took the form of an intricate dance. Industries like banking, education and health care were nationalized, while economic powerhouses like coffee and banana plantations were left in the hands of the families who had owned them for generations. Literacy and public health indicators shot up to levels usually associated with socialist states. Indeed, Costa Rica had become a socialist state, but under the watchful and paranoid eye of the U.S. in mid-century, it was a socialist state that took pains to suppress the Communist Party.

For all its dance steps, Costa Rica did not become idyllic, except perhaps in the minds of tourists. A gulf divides poor and rich, economic power is concentrated in a few sectors and those sectors are dominated by a few people. Those same few people swing most of Costa Rica’s political power as well. Still, people can read, they can see a doctor when they need to and, most important, they don’t worry about when the next band of soldiers will arrive to kill, rape and kidnap.
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In January, I wrote that 2004 will be the year that determines whether American democracy survives. The statement was more prophetic and carried broader implications than I realized. Democracy has been killed in Haiti, the semi-island nation in the Caribbean and American fingerprints are all over the corpse.

President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was hustled out of the country early Sunday on an American jet and – he says – at the point of an American gun. In response, the White House trotted out its highest-ranking official with roots in the Caribbean – Colin Powell – to call Mr. Aristide’s charge “absolutely baseless, absurd.” George W. Bush has turned political absurdity into standard fare these past three years, so perhaps Mr. Aristide’s remarks should not be easily dismissed.
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