'America, America!'

'America, America!'
Afghans remind us that the desire for freedom is universal.
BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Thursday, November 15, 2001 12:01 a.m. EST

Whatever comes next in Kabul, a vital message came through loud and clear as the Taliban fled the city Tuesday: Afghans want freedom.

You could see it, writ large, in the celebrations that broke out all over that long-battered city. With the apparatus of Taliban repression suddenly lifted after five terrible years, Kabulis shouted to the world their relief. They played music, flew kites, honked car horns, rang bicycle bells and danced for joy. Men lined up at the barbershops to shave off the Taliban-dictated beards. Here and there, women lifted their veils in a daring act of free will. And from the streets of Kabul--home just the day before to one of the most anti-American regimes on earth--came shouts of "America, America!"

We must understand how important a message this is, especially as Washington ponders its next steps in the war against terrorism, and in the true winning of hearts and minds in the Islamic world--or anywhere else. What a change from the pictures we had been getting of Kabul, of a city shrouded and brooding, the desires and opinions of its people mysterious, dark and possibly set against us. This week, with their repressors on the run, the people spoke. "America, America!"

This is a cry we have heard before, in places where the murk of dictatorship has suddenly lifted, and people until then not free to speak their minds reach out, calling the name of our country, a name that for so many stands for a value that is truly universal: freedom.

We heard and saw this in China, in 1989, for a short spring in which the people of Beijing seized control of their city and for a few weeks had the chance to tell us what they really felt. In downtown Beijing, they built their own Statue of Liberty. With yearning, they quoted the Gettysburg address, speaking of their own desire for a government "of the people, by the people for the people." They marched through the streets calling for democracy and justice, and until the tanks shut them down they broadcast that basic human message: Like us, they value freedom.

So it went also in the Soviet Union--symbolized in that incredible moment in August 1991, when, in a country reeling from more than 70 years of communist repression, Boris Yeltsin climbed atop an armored personnel carrier in front of the parliament building and waved the Russian flag. The defiant message beamed out from the heart of that vast communist state--whose leaders had for decades threatened the very existence of America and its values--was that the people themselves ached for freedom.

This is the same message, the universal shout, the cry from the human heart, that in our time has risen from the streets of Burma, from South Korea, from the Philippines, from the countries of Eastern Europe--and now from streets of Kabul.

How exactly to keep faith with this message is a question loaded with difficult details. In Afghanistan, the war is not over. And the Northern Alliance that just rolled back into Kabul wreaked enough havoc there the previous round so that when the Taliban showed up in 1996, the Kabulis actually welcomed them in--hoping it meant a change for the better. That turned out to be dead wrong, so wrong that the Northern Alliance for now looks good by contrast.

But the enduring answer, for any nation, is not simply to mill through the dictators, but to establish democracy. Getting that right can be a tough and slow process, as we have seen in Russia. But at least we should not wonder whether people, citizens of the streets--Arab or otherwise--really care about freedom. Given the chance to truly speak out, people do not celebrate tyranny; they shout for liberty. Not least, in understanding China, as well, it would be rash to read the reports of anti-American feeling now pouring out of there as a true reflection of what the people--as opposed to their leaders--privately value and truly want.

As we wonder what lies ahead most prominently in Iraq, but also across the rest of the Islamic world, what we must keep in mind is this universal human cry. America is a land that stands for liberty, and in this we have allies--however silent they may now be--among repressed people everywhere. We can debate how best to get our message out. In waging war we need not only faith in our own values, but strategy on the ground. But in understanding what lies locked up in the tyrannies of the world, it will be important to remember the shouts in Kabul this week: "America, America!"

Ms. Rosett is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. Her column appears Thursdays on OpinionJournal.com and in The Wall Street Journal Europe as "Letter From America."