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archived: 6 - 12 Mar, 2005 Back Next UPDATED: March 8, 2005 Since the Iraqi “elections” were held, right wing commentators have begun to trumpet the White House propaganda line that echoes the presidential prophecies of George Bush. The right-wingers are saying that there is now a democratic domino effect taking place across the Middle East that is directly attributable to the US-led invasion of Iraq and the ensuing elections. Given this state of disinformation, it is time to take a look at the Bush White House’s record on democracy to see whether it measures up to the claims now being made. The right wing columnists have been quoting Walid Jumblatt, who is an odd source for the substantiation of their theories supporting the Bush White House. Walid Jumblatt has long been a stalwart critic of American influence in the Middle East. He opposed the US invasion of Iraq, and he has loudly advocated the killing of US soldiers by Iraqi insurgents. Recently, Jumblatt has begun to spout his latest theory that the Iraqi elections were a genuinely democratic revolution tantamount to the toppling of the Berlin Wall. The right wing propagandists have quoted Jumblatt’s statement out of context and selectively without explaining his rabid anti-Americanism to their readers. What Jumblatt actually meant was that the eight million voters in the Iraqi elections are just like the people of East Germany, they are demanding the removal of the US military occupation just like the East Germans demanded the removal of the Soviet military occupation. Their demands are for a genuine form of democracy – not one imposed by foreign military intervention. Those demands are now surging throughout the Middle East. This is nothing new. After the assassination of Rafik Hariri, the Lebanese people demanded the dissolution of their Syrian-backed government. This was a positive step that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the situation in Iraq. Distrust of the Syrian-backed government in Lebanon has been building for years. Hariri’s assassination was the triggering event. The authors of the assassination have yet to be conclusively determined, but there is absolutely no credible argument that the democratic movement in Lebanon is a by-product of Bush’s foreign policy. The demonstrators themselves cite the example of the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine as their primary inspiration, and nobody with any credibility in Lebanon has cited the Iraqi elections. Jumblatt is the exception that proves the point. He has no credibility, and he wants the ham-fisted and heavy-handed US out of the Middle East. Desperate for confirmation of the official Bush line, right-wingers have even cited the Palestinian elections – which took place before those in Iraq – as evidence of a renewal of democratic dynamism in the Middle East. The Palestinian elections were triggered by the death of Yassir Arafat, and the new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Abu Mazen, has been in position to replace Arafat for decades. Once again, the developments in Palestine had nothing to do with the US intervention in Iraq. They were a natural and predictable outgrowth of the progress that democracy has been making among the Palestinians for the past fifty years. The depth of the duplicity of the Bush White House is painfully obvious. While Bush constantly boasts about his support for “freedom and democracy” he does not put his policy – or his budget – where his mouth is. This year, Bush requested $30 million less than he did last year for the promotion of democracy in the Middle East. His latest budget will cut the US Agency for International Development and the State Department’s human rights and democracy fund. That is not all. Bush is now proposing a deep cut in funds for democracy promotion in Africa, Asia and the Middle East available from the National Endowment for Democracy. Bush’s latest budget cuts these crucial funds by an additional $12.7 million. Is Bush actually serious about the spread of democracy? The answer is obviously, “No, he is not. His political posturing is pure propaganda for the people in red state America.” What about the liberation of peoples in Afghanistan and Iraq? While the presidential election was held in Afghanistan in October, the nation is teetering on the brink of the abyss of anarchy. Under the US occupation, the opium trade has soared, and Afghanistan is now clearly an opium economy that empowers the warlords and discredits the “legitimate” US-backed government. This situation is a legacy of US policy from the 1980s, when the Reagan administration funded the warlords and armed Osama Bin Laden to oppose the Soviet occupation. The average life expectancy in Afghanistan is 45 years, and twenty percent of children die before reaching the age of five. In spite of all the claims made for women’s rights in Afghanistan, the truth is much more depressing. Afghani women are still arrested and subjected to humiliating medical examinations to determine whether or not their hymens are intact by agents empowered by the Karzai government. The Bush White House will not even grant the Karzai government the paltry $130 million it needs to print ballots, approve candidates and set up elections. A recent report by the United Nations ranks Afghanistan 173 out of 178 nations surveyed. These failures are a direct result of failed US policies orchestrated by Bush and his neoconservative propagandists. The recent elections in Iraq did not change anything on the ground. The occupation continues and so does the insurgency. This week 115 Iraqis died in the worst act of terrorism since the US invasion. The elections were deeply flawed. The most important issue in Iraq – the US military occupation – was not on the ballot. All candidates were pre-approved by the US Military Governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer, who cleared all candidates before his departure. The candidates were not allowed to campaign, because the insurgency made public exposure as a hand-picked US-approved candidate far too dangerous. Some of the candidates were assassinated. Only Iyad Allawi, the ex-CIA operative and the political leader of the Iraqi Group was allowed to use all forms of state property including his helicopter to campaign openly throughout Iraq. Allawi still lost, and it was a pitiful and humiliating loss. Allawi’s party was crushed by the United Iraqi Alliance who based their campaign on the message, “Americans, go home!” The people could not vote for candidates; they could only vote for anonymous lists that were symbolized by a bewildering series of icons on what must have been one of the most confusing ballots in world history. Eighty percent of the Iraqi diaspora refused to vote. The candidates who were elected have no power to roll back the illegal edicts put in place prior to Bremer’s departure which are the most outrageous political issues in Iraq. Bremer’s edicts are deeply unpopular, because they grant the power over Iraqi oil to major oil corporations mostly based in America. Worse, Bremer’s edicts convert Iraq into a deeply subservient US colony. Bremer privatized two hundred state owned enterprises. He legalized the 100% ownership of Iraqi business by foreign corporations. Bremer mandated unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all profits and other funds of foreign corporations who can send unlimited amounts of funds to their offshore accounts. He granted US corporations forty year ownership licenses for all of their Iraqi investments. More. Bremer implanted US-appointed auditors and government ministers and gave them sweeping powers over public programs, contracts, businesses and their employees. Bremer’s edicts actually forbid Iraqis from receiving any preferential treatment in the assignment of government contracts, and they allow Halliburton and Bechtel to own Iraqi businesses while sending all of the money home without any tax burden in Iraq. Neither are the US corporations who now own Iraq’s economy required to employ any Iraqis, nor are they required nor even encouraged to reinvest any of the money earned there in Iraq. One of Bremer’s orders grants total immunity from prosecution in the Iraqi courts to any foreign contractor, including security firms involved in the torture and deaths of Iraqi civilians. Under this edict, even if foreign contractors trigger an environmental catastrophe, Iraqis would have to file a complaint in a US court. Bremer granted foreign banks the right to own up to 50% of Iraqi banks, thus granting foreigners control over one half of the wealth of the nation in one fell swoop. Bremer dropped the tax rate on corporations from 40% to 15%. In dissolving the customs, duties and excises on imports, Bremer swamped the Iraqi market in cheap foreign imports that devastated Iraqi businesses across the board. I daresay that if the Bremer Orders had been on the Iraqi ballot, they would have been repudiated overwhelmingly. But, they were not, and they will not be on the ballot in the stage-managed elections scheduled for later this year. And, who is stage-managing the Iraqi elections? The Bush White House is trumpeting them as their greatest gift to the people of Iraq. The Bremer Orders fly in the face of ethical business practices, and they shall remain as a source of anti-democratic shame on the face of America for generations to come. While the Bush White House has done nothing to establish democracy any place in the world, it has been pandering to dictatorships around the globe. In praising Pervez Musharraf, Bush has extinguished the flames of democracy in Pakistan. Musharraf seized power in a military coup d’etat, and he was allowed to legitimize his illegal grasp on power by the US following 9/11. In Latin America, the Bush White House was the only government to recognize the coup d’etat that momentarily displaced the government of Hugo Chavez, the hugely popular democratically elected leader of Venezuela. The Bush White House remains a steadfast political supporter of undemocratic dictatorships in Latin America and Central Asia. While Vladimir Putin has rolled back democracy in Russia, the Bush White House has done absolutely nothing to confront him. Quite the opposite. Bush panders to Putin at every conceivable opportunity. There may be much more to their highly acclaimed personal relationship than meets the public eye. In 1998, a secret meeting was held in Texas of former members of the CIA and the KGB. The meeting endorsed George Bush for the US presidency. It is possible that Putin or his direct representatives were involved in that meeting that anointed Bush as the candidate of the ultra-right, pro-police state and military intelligence factions of the US and Russia. In 1998, Putin was an eminence grise in the Russian intelligence apparatus, and he was not appointed premiere until New Year’s Eve in 1999. The secret treaties and top secret alliances joining the Bush White House and the Putin Kremlin at the hip are deep and historic. Under the heels of the cowboy boots trampling around the Bush White House, America has tumbled from her high seat as a leading advocate of genuine democracy. Not only was the presidential election of 2000 violated and reversed by the legal coup d’etat that outraged the planet, but Bush has systematically implanted anti-democratic policies across the board in the United States. In 2004, the US State Department invited the Organization for Security & Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to observe the presidential election. The OSCE produced the report that condemned the presidential elections in the Ukraine as shambolic. For America, the OSCE have produced another damning report. According to the OSCE, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) is a sham. Americans do not enjoy world class standards of voting rights or electoral democracy. Voter suppression amongst the poor and ethnic minorities is shocking. The use of electronic voting systems manufactured by Diebold and ES&S raises serious fundamental questions about the validity of American democracy. While 80% of the vote in the last US presidential election was tabulated on Diebold and ES&S machines, both companies are controlled by one pair of brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich, who are both deeply partisan right-wing Republicans and neoconservatives. Far too few voting machines were assigned to the largest precincts where lines as long as eleven hours formed, while lines in middle class precincts permitted voting in less than 15 minutes. Worse. The Republican National Committee (RNC) financed an election fraud scheme that was operated by the former Chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, Nathan Sproul. Sproul set up fake voter registration programs in Nevada, Oregon and West Virginia. People were offered voter registration forms, and when they filled them out, they were asked for whom did the intend to vote: Bush or Kerry? Those that responded, “Bush,” were registered with the state Registrar, while those who responded, “Kerry,” were unregistered, with their forms sent to the nearest rubbish bin. The RNC project cost over $500,000 and led to the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of Kerry voters. Is Nathan Sproul being prosecuted? Who knows, after the election the nation has moved on to the latest sitcom, and the ratings for the Sproul prosecution would be nowhere near those for the Michael Jackson case. In the final analysis, the battle between hypocrisy and democracy is drawing to a close. In America, hypocrisy is triumphing over democracy, even if the citizens of the Middle East who have been demanding democracy from their American-backed dictators since the end of WWII are now finally making progress.
Last Update: 03/23/2006 |
