There are times when all the emotion, complexity, anguish and ambiguity of a situation sharply focuses into a single point.
Such was the case Wednesday.
With a large crowd cheering them on, several Iraqis, with the help of a U.S. Marine tank recovery vehicle, toppled a 40-foot statue of Saddam Hussein in a main square of Baghdad. The act of defiance and jubilation was broadcast live, with millions of people watching around the world. Constant replays of the statue's destruction were broadcast, along with its subsequent dismantling and dragging through the streets of the city.
It may well be that the statue's demise becomes the defining moment of Operation Iraqi Freedom, much as the fall of the Berlin Wall came to symbolize the collapse of Eastern European socialist countries or Rosa Parks' refusal to sit in the back of the bus came to symbolize the civil rights movement.
Others come to mind: the lifting of the last helicopter from the U.S. embassy in Saigon, say, or the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima.
"The kind of society we have is very vague and abstract," said Utah State University philosophy professor Kent Robson. "These are visual reminders — shorthand we use to try to make sense of things."
In this case, the image centered on a big hunk of bronze and reinforcing steel, fashioned in the form of a not particularly attractive man. Symbolically, the statue's fall and the crowd's reaction to it vindicate President Bush's decision to go to war.
Ideas are powerful things. A marketing executive would give his right arm for that kind of positive imagery.
"Businesses market to emotion," said Dave Thomas, president of ThomasArts, an advertising and marketing company. "Smart businesspeople want to put those emotions in some concrete form," like the Nike swoosh symbolizing the joy of athletic movement or the Rock of Gibraltar symbolizing strength and stability for Prudential Insurance.
But that's business, where only money is lost or won. In politics and war, the stakes are much higher.
Unlike business, in national and international events it is very difficult to contrive a good symbolic moment. With a few exceptions, those moments simply happen in the heat of the situation and people latch onto them as a release of all the pent-up anguish and grief and joy and hesitation and doubt they have been harboring.
"The moment people find a symbol like this (the statue coming down) they are willing to fight," said Hakan Yavuz, a professor at the University of Utah's Center for Middle Eastern Studies. "It is a very powerful tool. The force behind these huge statues is very much based on fear, not popular support, and the moment the statue is gone, the fear is gone, and the whole system falls apart."
Millions of people have fought and died for symbols. Consider the wars conducted under the cross of Christianity, or the star of David, or the Union Jack. Or consider why people get so upset when someone burns a piece of cloth that happens to have 13 red-and-white stripes and 50 white stars on a blue field, or why it was so important for Francis Scott Key to see the flag still waving after the attack on Fort McHenry, or why Southerners still get so worked up over the Confederate battle flag.
"Symbols are very, very important," said USU political science professor Michael Lyons. "The average citizen knows so little, substantively, about the workings of government. Political issues are intrinsically complex. People walk around with kind of a void of knowledge, and symbolism fills that void."
In fact, while Lyons acknowledges that the motivations of the Iraqis who ripped down the statue were clearly real, given symbolism's importance, "it's entirely possible that our military or the CIA encouraged them to topple it."
E-mail: aedwards@desnews.com