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archived: 6 - 12 Feb, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: February 8, 2005 THE PLAY FOR PEORIA We are now deeply adrift in the throes of major political ballyhoo. The barkers of the Bush administration are barking louder than ever. Elections in Iraq! Democracy in Iraq! Blue finger in your face, Saddam! Regime Change! U-S-A! U-S-A! But, what is really taking place? Is it democracy for the Iraqi people or something totally different? For starters, let us examine the turnout. Immediately after the polls closed, we heard the Bush Barkers exclaim that the turnout had been a massive 60%. But, is that either massive or accurate? Actually, it is almost certainly neither. We cannot now know what the turnout was for the simple reason that there is no reliable roll of voters in Iraq. The latest estimate from a pro-US website operated by Israelis is that fewer than 40% of eligible Iraqis voted in the “election.” This is a huge disappointment, or it should be for: George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Bremer, Iyad Allawi and Condi Rice. Why? Because it is less than half of the turnout for the elections in Vietnam in 1967, when 83% of the eligible voters turned out to vote shortly before the Tet Offensive brought an end to the fantasy of Vietnamization, democratization and nation-building in South East Asia. The allegedly enthusiastic turnout in Iraq was painted as a powerful repudiation of the insurgency. However, that seems powerfully unlikely. With very few troops under the command of the interim government, the newly elected nascent government cannot defend itself against the popular Iraqi resistance. Using their own numbers of circa 50% turnout, Iyad Allawi’s constituency is going to be somewhere below 10% of the eligible voters in Iraq. After two years of military operations, occupation and Iraqification – that is a crushing defeat. The United Iraqi Alliance will garner four times that amount of support, and it waged its campaign under the banner, “Americans, go home!” Already, there is jockeying for position in the new government and the United Iraqi Alliance is beginning to develop factional tensions, but it is safe to say at this point – that Iyad Allawi will not be retained by the new government – if a new government is at all reflective of the vote that has just taken place. While the Kurds detest the Iraqi resistance, they are demanding a heavy price for their support of the occupation. They want some form of political autonomy and ownership of the fabulous Mosul oil field – one of the richest in the known universe. The Kurdish Question hung over Condi Rice’s visit to Turkey this week, just as it will hang over any further diplomatic negotiations between Washington and Ankara. Turkey will not take kindly to an independent Kurdistan, which could cause insurgency, strife and pose the very real danger of civil war in their eastern provinces which are home for many Kurds. No, the Iraqi elections are not what the White House says they are at all. They are a public relations project designed to bolster flagging support for the war in Peoria, Paris, Bonn, Tokyo, Moscow, London and everywhere else on the globe. These “elections” were not designed to change a regime from dictatorship to democracy; they were a tactical ploy to manufacture approval for the occupation in the Red and Blue states as well as Europe where skepticism of Bush’s brand of American military nation-building holds sway. Why did the Carter Center refuse to send election observers to Iraq? Could it be because they realize that these elections were less than spontaneously democratic? Perhaps. The brazen propaganda that has flowed from the Bush White House in the form of his inaugural address and his State of the Union speech has been monstrous, appalling and deeply deceitful. What the Bush administration is actually doing is perfectly clear. We are enforcing regime changes in order to pave the way for the economic exploitation of recalcitrant nations and peoples. The formula is simple: deionization as undemocratic dictatorships; diplomatic isolation; military intervention; occupation; implantation of a freshly minted “government” populated by politicians programmed for corporate power all packaged as a war against tyranny. Peoria will love it for they will be told to do so by the corporate media in America. We will extract the oil, the gas, the minerals, the labor and trade with the new regime of sycophantic puppets on credit which will create a debt mountain as yet another means of reining in cultural diversity and independence. The puppets will gladly serve their ultimate puppet-masters in Washington for a series of small scale bribes. Honesty, decency and integrity are for sale in every precinct on this planet which is experiencing a population explosion of political puppets. Frequently, the masters of the Bush Era bribocracy will operate from offices located in the Pentagon while others will hold forth from Wall Street. And, it will all be done in the name of democracy, freedom and liberty to satisfy the people in Peoria. Ultimately, when our troops go home, the puppets will collapse as a new movement for political independence dawns. In the past week, stories have been circulating that Donald Rumsfeld has cancelled plans to attend a security conference in Germany this month because he is concerned that he might be arrested for war crimes. Into that surging cauldron of Germany they have hurled Condi Rice, to see whether she will sink or swim. She did neither. Will we see any of these people indicted in the future? Probably. And we will certainly see the prestige, standing and support for America crumble. __________________ Since 1968, Michael Carmichael has been a professional political consultant. Beginning as a Student Coordinator for Robert F. Kennedy, he has worked in five US presidential campaigns as well as over 100 major American political campaigns for federal and state offices. In 1985, he founded The Oxford Centre for Public Affairs in the United Kingdom. In 2003, he founded The Planetary Movement Limited, a global political action organization based in the United Kingdom.
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
