SOVEREIGNTY IS LIKE PREGNANCY - YOU CAN'T BE A LITTLE BIT PREGNANT
YOU EITHER ARE OR AREN'T! - AND THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS LIMITED SOVEREIGNTY!
The Maui News
Letters to the Editor
Thursday, July 01, 2004
If Iraq, then Hawai'i - Sovereignty!
In praise of sovereignty for Iraq, I'd like to suggest that in spite of a lot of atrocious and self-defeating U.S. behavior, the idea, and hopefully the reality, of a sovereign Iraq is emphatically something to be proud of. It is also something for this hurting world to celebrate.
Sovereignty is intrinsically beautiful. Between individuals, it would be like me acknowledging you saying: "You may have some odd ways, but you are an individual with inalienable rights and value, and I will treat you with love and respect." Internationally, it is acknowledgment of the "cultural self," as if the individual rights and freedoms of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights were extended to the world's individual cultures.
If the U.S. is willing to invest its blood and reputation to rescue Iraqi sovereignty from Saddam's torturous hand, then surely the U.S. can maturely, and in great friendship, rescue the Hawaiian sovereignty taken from Queen Lili'uokalani's civil hand and from the Hawaiian people when she decided to save lives by yielding to an
occupying force in spite of near unanimous Hawaiian opposition to the takeover.
I hope the country I love will go beyond an admirable maturity of the Apology Resolution and on to the reality of restitution, making right its past "indiscretions." As surely as the U.S. reputation has soured with Iraq, it could be sweetened with Hawaiian sovereignty.
Imagine the world saying of the USA: "Now that's a country with integrity!"
Tom McKinlay
Pukalani
