"Every human must take responsibility for his actions"
About this Quote
“Every human must take responsibility for his actions” is the kind of clean, moral sentence politicians reach for when the ground is shifting beneath them. Coming from Jalal Talabani - Kurdish leader, Iraqi president, and consummate coalition-builder in a country repeatedly broken and rebuilt - it reads less like a fortune-cookie platitude than a pressure point.
The intent is disciplinary: not just a call for personal ethics, but a demand that people stop outsourcing blame to tribe, party, sect, or history. In post-2003 Iraq, “responsibility” isn’t abstract. It’s about militias and ministers, corruption and retaliation, the everyday alibis that flourish when violence is explained as inevitability and governance is treated as someone else’s mess. Talabani spent his career trying to stitch together rivals who had strong incentives to dodge accountability, and this line functions as a moral minimum for civic life: if you want a state, act like citizens, not merely members.
The subtext is also strategic. By universalizing the subject - “every human” - Talabani sidesteps the dangerous act of naming culprits while still implying there are culprits. It’s a way to condemn without triggering immediate escalations, a diplomatic rebuke disguised as humanism. The phrasing pulls responsibility inward, away from grand narratives and toward agency, where excuses are harder to launder.
It works because it’s plain. In a politics saturated with slogans, the sentence sounds almost stubbornly adult: consequences exist, and no amount of identity can annul them.
The intent is disciplinary: not just a call for personal ethics, but a demand that people stop outsourcing blame to tribe, party, sect, or history. In post-2003 Iraq, “responsibility” isn’t abstract. It’s about militias and ministers, corruption and retaliation, the everyday alibis that flourish when violence is explained as inevitability and governance is treated as someone else’s mess. Talabani spent his career trying to stitch together rivals who had strong incentives to dodge accountability, and this line functions as a moral minimum for civic life: if you want a state, act like citizens, not merely members.
The subtext is also strategic. By universalizing the subject - “every human” - Talabani sidesteps the dangerous act of naming culprits while still implying there are culprits. It’s a way to condemn without triggering immediate escalations, a diplomatic rebuke disguised as humanism. The phrasing pulls responsibility inward, away from grand narratives and toward agency, where excuses are harder to launder.
It works because it’s plain. In a politics saturated with slogans, the sentence sounds almost stubbornly adult: consequences exist, and no amount of identity can annul them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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