We're spreading democracy around the world. So, democracy's always good?

[bigtree]

I've got my doubts.

Don't get me wrong. I think our democracy is workable and generally productive and a good thing. But I'm concerned that in Iraq and Afghanistan the process may have codified and legitimized seriously flawed authorities. In Afghanistan, for instance, Karsai is little more than a U.S. puppet who, along with his honcho Khalizad, used to be shills for U.S. oil interests in that Unacol pipeline deal that was to stretch from the Caspian Sea to Pakistan. I can't bring myself to believe that their main concern is with the people of Afghanistan rather than with their industry cronies.

Great that folks there voted, but maybe not so great now that this cabal of oil executives has been legitimized and slated to get full financial support from Americans and a place at the international business table. Warlords still rule most of the country, and the forces we are helping train there will be killing 'God knows who' when they get their weapons. Come next election (if there is one), who can say for certain that there will be a fair process (as if the last one was fair)? What happens when the parties we helped achieve power with our military forces consolidate their new authority and cling to power?

In Iraq I have similar concerns. We have facilitated, with the help of our military, an election that has brought to the constitution table parties that seem to be more favorable to our adversaries, like Iran, and whose strict, sometimes discriminatory religion has always governed their conduct and shaped their laws. With our myopic rush to achieve democracy and hold elections there, seemingly indifferent to the interests of a Sunni minority (some of whose elements are engaged in violent revolt), we are helping an authority to emerge that may, in the long term, run counter to our interests and security. That may be just fine. It's not our country and we have no business dictating any course for Iraqis, but we did in fact cause this to happen, with the full force of our troops and weapons.

But since folks did vote, and since that vote is a valuable tenet of democracy, there is an attitude that we have accomplished some worthy task that should be celebrated. I have my doubts. I didn't like the situation before elections, but I'm not entirely certain that what we have brought about will, in the long term, be any better. I see all of the mechanisms of power being manipulated, but I don't see any real benefits on the ground. More violence, more division, but no peace. No U.S. exit. Maybe I expect too much, but then again, we were promised the moon and all of the cheese.

Whadaya think?

[Gr8_Scott]

1. We do not live in a Democracy....

.... we live in a representative Republic. The founding fathers were very specific about the dangers a pure democracy represents. I am always amazed when our elected officials, who are sworn to uphold the Constitution, either choose to ignore or are simply so ignorant of the form of government they are elected to uphold and defend, do not even refer to our nation as a Republic. Our representatives (both parties inclusive) never fail to spout the word Democracy and rarely if ever do you hear the word Republic used properly.A Republic is based upon law (the Constitution), rather than a simple majority vote, a Democracy.Mob rule usually means someone is about to be lynched!

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

:think:

[bigtree]

3. Well, we will presumably have a constitution come out of the Iraq vote

I just wonder, is the rabbit already in place for the magic to happen? What happens when they put their hand inside the hat and they come up with nothing more than lint?

[Devlzown]

2. For democracy to work, you must have

a fairly well educated populace and real choices between candidates. Our republic is in trouble now because of poor education (which includes the media) and because of the apathy that arises from lesser-evilism at the polls. Iraq and Afghanistan are even worse off than we are, so I don't expect democracy to thrive there. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that in 10 years Iraq will have another dictator and Afghanistan will have another Taliban-type regime. We're not spreading democracy. We're just staging elections in order to justify our invasions of these countries to the rest of the world.

[Stirk]

4. "Democracy" only means "subordinate to US business interests".

That's how our politicians use the word, anyway. We've dismantled democracies and replaced them with dictatorships, as in Chile. In fact, I can't think of a single country in which the US has promoted representative government in the last 50 years.

Remember Wolfowitz' suggestion that the Turkish military should stage a coup? That was for one reason only: the Turkish government was listening to the will of it's people instead of the Bush Administration. They praised Aznar in Spain for ignoring his people and supporting the Iraq invasion, while castigating the governments of Germany, France, etc.

Our government does not promote democracy. Not around the globe, and not here at home either. This current bunch in Washington actually despises democracy.

[bigtree]

5. You had to have a musing moment at the thought that now we will be forced

to accept the rejection of this Christian model of government that we were pushing in favor of the majority Muslim coalition (even though it was in large part orchestrated by the clerics). I can't help but think that the Bush cabal was actually led into this and handed their worst nightmare, despite their bravado at the conclusion. I mean, what idiot actually thought we would push centuries of Muslim influence aside in favor of our own view of what government is best for the Iraqis? Still, it doesn't make me comfortable sitting in the bastion of the Great Satan watching these contrary forces array counter to our interests and, in the long term, our safety. We're screwed by the invasion and occupation and I just see more hell to pay down the road. Smart manuvering by the Shi'ites though.

[Gr8_Scott]

7. It's interesting that the Shi'ites are calling for restraint

.... while the Sunnis and insurgents are doing the bombings and killing fellow Muslims. The Sunnis will either have to accept partial power and give up the violence or a true Democracy will occur and the 51+% of Iraqis will rise up, kick the shit out of them and throw the survivors out of the country. (Or we can only hope it will happen!)

[bigtree]

13. "calling for"

likely just talk to keep favor with the U.S. until we give them control of the money and oil. But that will not happen anytime soon, if ever. Mosques bombed, Shia attacked. How long can they refrain from striking back? Then the coalition will not gel like intended. I suspect that Bush will let that happen and even give some assistance to the Sunnis who, after all, we spent years doing business with against the very Shi'ite parties they are celebrating now. I don't think Bush actually wants peace under these circumstances. That would mean he would have to give up the oil and watch as Iraq undermines his interests in destabilizing Iran.

BTW, I sense some sympathy in your post for Bush's mandate there, and more than a little fantasy about "True Democracy". 3 posts? enjoy your stay.:eyes:

[truth2power]

6. No, we're spreading our brand of CAPITALISM.

We don't care about democracy.

As one of Barbara Kingsolver's characters says, in The Poisonwood Bible, "Democracy and dictatorship are political systems; they have to do with who participates in the leadership. Socialism and capitalism are economic systems. It has to do with who owns the wealth of your nation, and who gets to eat."

[Gr8_Scott]

8. Always follow the money!

:think:

[SmokingJacket]

9. Exactly. If we cared about democracy, we'd have supported Aristide.

We'd be loving Chavez. We'd have nothing good to say about Saudi Arabia.

But "spreading Capitalism around the world" has a kind of seedy feel, doesn't it? It might make people start to wonder who profits...

[Deja Q]

10. The US sure as hell ain't no democracy... no wonder Europe is wary of US.

unless you happen to be Boeing or Halliburton, of course... that's *'s idea of democracy. Free money for the bidders who are friendliest to those in power.

George Washington must be spinning in his grave. :cry:

Even Benadict Arnold would be depressed at this point...

[Igel]

11. Pure democracy is never good.

And democracy is far from a Xian proposal. Started before they got started.

But "democracy" now means so many different things, the best description is "allowing the populace a say in electing leaders or laws". As a republic, we qualify. Under that definition.

Majoritarianism is the problem. Just because you have a majority doesn't mean you get things your way. Otherwise the system is set up nearly perfectly for one group, and all other groups are in deep trouble. This always sounds good when you're a clear majority, but people invariably forget that their majority status is transient in a country like the US.

The US constitution was originally going to have no rights defined, but all preserved (which, of course, would lead to disaster except in a fairly moral or virtuous society, as one founder pointed out, or in one with a clear definition of rights upheld by long tradition). Unlimited rights is a great idea in theory, but sucky in practice. But by defining some rights, they made the impression available that only those rights inhered in the populace and state governments. But they also prevented the majority from forcing its will on the minorities. Changing definitions never helps (a tax on work was originally an excise tax, and unconstitutional, until a court said an income tax wasn't an excise tax, if I remember right).

I have no problem with a state with Islam as the guiding principle of the laws, *as long as* the minorities' rights aren't trampled. Christian tradition--based in canon law-- and English common law mediated by Enlightenment thought (itself merely modified Xian European tradition) is the basis of US law. Al-Sistani's either spoken out both sides of his mouth, or enunciated bargaining positions and a recognition of reality: he realizes he won't get everything he wants and has stated everything he does want, or he's lied through his teach and is now stating his real goal.

Da'wa, of Jaafari fame, is by far not the most pro-Iranian contingent. I'd guess Sadr is the most pro-Iranian (or at least pro-Iranian style) Shi'a pseudo-politician, with Al-Hakim not far behind.

[bigtree]

16. this is good insight

and good reasoning. I think the Shia are playing for power and hoping to be handed the basket of goods when they achieve it.

Bush is speaking out of his ass also. I don't believe for a minute that he will allow the Shi'ites to gain control of anything but titles and some office space in a building somewhere in Iraq.

[Sapere_Aude]

12. i think so

well, i think that its always good to free an oppressed people. Thats why I originally supported Iraq.

explain how I'm wrong to think that please....

[bigtree]

14. We originally supported Saddam no matter what we knew about his oppression

It wasn't until BushI got nervous about him taking Kuwait's ports and undermining his friends in Saudi Arabia did we profess to be concerned about his oppression.

Bush I, who ultimately triumphed in making Kuwait safe for future monarchies, said of his own military adventure in Iraq, "We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a New World Order, a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations."

That was utter nonsense. The rule of law that was enforced in the ousting of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait was nothing more than the product of a patronage that was forged in the U.N. with U.S. taxpayer-funded payments to Saudi Arabia's King Faud, Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, Jordan's King Hussein, and others.

The risk to the world community, as stated by the president then, and by this president today; that an enriched Saddam would align with some radical Muslim theocracy, would be in sharp contrast to the campaigns against those very forces in which Iraq had waged war at our bequest and with our eager assistance.

The Bush I administration's stated objective in their Gulf war was to protect the flow of Mideast oil to the U.S. and to prevent Iraq from obtaining a seaport from which Iraqi shipments would supposedly depress an already sputtering world market.

Saddam Hussein had not threatened the American people in his power grab for a greater share of the oil pie. Indeed, the U.S. must have been aware that the overproduction of oil by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia prior to Iraq's invasion was a move to drive the price of oil down, and in the process, weaken Iraq.

Aside from the question of the danger that the expansion of Saddam's dictatorship may have posed to the region, the defense of Kuwait's territorial integrity was a foreign concept to H.W. Bush who had participated in and overseen the ordering of the mining of the Nicaraguan harbor, the invasion of Grenada, the overthrow of the president of Panama and the installation of a U.S. puppet government there, as well as the acquiescence of Britain's invasion of the Falklands in 1982.

The Bush I administration issued a national security directive which listed among its objectives; ". . . the defense of U.S. vital interests in the region, if necessary through the use of military force; and defense against forces that would cause added damage to the U.S. and world economies."

More importantly, the security directive declared that access to Persian Gulf oil and the security of key, friendly states in the area were vital to U.S. national security. It was on that basis that President Herbert Walker Bush waged war with Iraq.

More than 250,000 individual bombs and missiles were dropped or fired in 42 days onto Iraq in that first war. Some 244 laser-guided bombs and 88 cruise missiles were reportedly delivered against Baghdad targets. The people of Iraq suffered from power outages and systems failures caused by bombing attacks on their weakened infrastructure. Medicine deteriorated without proper refrigeration. Food spoiled; water stagnated and became dangerously polluted.

The citizens of Iraq, already starving and impoverished as a result of the crippling sanctions imposed on Iraq by the U.N., at the bequest of the U.S., were not 'liberated' by the destruction. Of Iraq's 545,000 troops in the Kuwait Theater of Operations, about 100,000 are believed to have lost their lives.

Before the imposition of sanctions in the '80's, and before the war, Iraq boasted the region's best schools and hospitals, and enjoyed the smallest gap between the rich and poor of any of its neighbors. Also, Iraq's educated class ranked among the region's best.

Six weeks of intensive bombing reduced Iraq to what was described as a pre-industrial state. Unemployment soared and the black market flourished, resulting in a widening of the gap between the impoverished majority and those few who managed to cling to wealth.

Before sanctions were imposed, ninety percent of Iraq's income came from oil exports. Once sanctions restricted oil sales, lack of basic food and medicine soon reached catastrophic levels.
The country's water, electrical, and oil systems, and other infrastructure were devastated in the bombing campaign.
Human Rights Watch documented the effects of the first U.S. aggression against Iraq and found that more than 500 civilian buildings and homes were targeted and destroyed with no apparent connection to any threat to the U.S. or its allies.

Middle East Watch, in a more damning account, tells of some 9,000 homes, housing some 72,000 people, that had been destroyed or badly damaged during the bombing. Some 2,500 of the buildings reported destroyed were in Baghdad and another 1,900 in Basra. 10

The American death-count from that first Gulf war was 346 total from all causes, out of 511,000 troops deployed from August 1990 to February 1991.

The Bush's routs of Saddam may have made them appear to be warrior kings. But in the context of their overwhelming domination of the inept Saddam and the hapless Iraqi army, they more resemble Don Quixote.

In the classic tale of the ideal vs. the real, Quixote battles windmills that appear to be giants, and sheep that look to him like armies. He believes himself the victor, comes to his senses, only to be trapped by his delusion; forced to play the conquering hero.

The most definitive total of violent civilian deaths in Baghdad has been published by Iraq Body Count (IBC), a research group tracking media-reported civilian deaths occurring as a consequence of the US/UK military intervention and occupation.

IBC's extraction of media-reported civilian injuries from the Iraq Body Count database and archive of war reports provides evidence of tens of thousands of civilian injuries on top of the maximum reported 10,000+ deaths. Most of these injuries were in the Baghdad area alone, suggesting that the full, countrywide picture, as with deaths, is yet to emerge."

Liberation? As Barbara Jordan said, "From what, to what.?"

[bigtree]

15. Saddam Hussein was, without question, the leader of a brutal dictatorship.

As many as 300,000 Iraqis are believed to have been deliberately murdered by the regime in the "Anfal campaign" against the Kurds, and the assaults on the Marsh Arabs and southern Shi`a populations, which resulted in thousands of more dead. http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/ANFALINT.htm
http://www.hrw.org (Human Rights Watch)

Between 1977 and 1987, some 4,500-5,000 Kurdish villages were systematically destroyed, and the survivors were forced into concentration camps. http://www.hrw.org/press/2003/04/iraqtribunal.htm

Many of the atrocities took place at a time when the U.S. was actively supporting Hussein in a manufactured revolution against the Iranian government, whose leaders had humiliated Americans in the '70's hostage crisis.

Iraq used chemical weapons in 1983-1984, during the Iran-Iraq war. It has been reported that some 20,000 Iranians were killed by mustard gas, and the nerve agents tabun and sarin.
In 1988, Iraqi soldiers invaded Kurdistan and rounded up more than 100,000 Kurds and executed them. In March 1988, in the town of Halabja, more than 3,000 civilians died from chemical gas attacks by the Iraqi military.

Iraq has been rightly condemned by the U.S. and most of the international community for these and other deadly actions against its citizens and its neighbors. But Iraq did not operate against its enemies alone or without our knowledge, and in many instances, U.S. support.

Nightline, in Sept. 1991 reported that the Atlanta branch of an Italian bank, BNL, was able to funnel billions, some of it in U.S. credits, to Iraq's military. The U.S. apparently knew of the transfers and turned a blind eye. Nightline Show #2690 - Sept. 13, 1991

"Sophisticated military technology was illegally transferred from a major U.S. company in Lancaster, Pennsylvania to South Africa and Chile and, from there, on to Iraq. The Iraqi-born designer of a chemical weapon plant in Libya set up shop in Florida, producing and then shipping to Iraq chemical weapon components. The CIA, the FBI and other federal agencies were made aware of the operation and did nothing to prevent it."

The report further states: "During the 1980s and into the '90s, senior officials of both the Reagan and Bush administrations encouraged the privatization of foreign policy, certainly toward Iran and Iraq. They made a mockery of the export control system; they found ways of encouraging foreign governments to do what our laws prohibited. They either knew or, if not, were guilty of the grossest incompetence, that U.S. companies were collaborating with foreign arms merchants in the illegal transfer of American technology that helped Saddam Hussein build his formidable arsenal."

It summarizes that, "Iraq, during much of the 1980's and into the '90s, was able acquire sophisticated U.S. technology, intelligence material, ingredients for chemical weapons, indeed, entire weapon-producing plants, with the knowledge, acquiescence and sometimes even the assistance of the U.S. government."

The New York Times reported in Aug. 2002 that during the Reagan administration, the U.S. military provided Saddam with critical intelligence that was used in Iraq's aggression against Iran, at a time when they were clearly using chemical and biological agents in their prosecution of that war. (U.S.support_for_Iraq in the 1980s) http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/globalissue/usforeignpolicy/iraq1980scontent.html

The United States was an accomplice in the use of these materials at a time when President Reagan's top aides, including then- Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci and Gen. Colin L. Powell, then national security adviser, were publicly condemning Iraq for its use of poison gas, especially after Iraq attacked Kurds in Halabja.

The classified support reportedly involved more than 60 military advisors from the Defense Intelligence Agency who provided detailed information on Iranian deployments, tactical planning for battles, plans for air strikes and bomb-damage assessments for Iraq.

A retired intelligence officer recalled that, in the military's view, "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern."

A 1994 Senate Banking Committee report, and a letter from the Centers for Disease Control in 1995, revealed that the U.S. had shipped biological agents to Iraq at a time when Washington knew that Iraq was using chemical weapons to kill thousands of Iranian troops. (The Riegle Report--U.S. Chemical and Biological Warfare-Related Dual Use Exports to Iraq and their Possible Impact on the Health Consequences of the Gulf War) http://www.gulfweb.org/bigdoc/report/riegle1.html
http://www.businessweek.com:/print/bwdaily/dnflash/sep2002/nf20020920_3025.htm?db (A U.S. Gift to Iraq: Deadly Viruses- Business Week Online)

The reports showed that Iraq was allowed to purchase batches of anthrax, botulism, E. coli, West Nile fever, gas gangrene, dengue fever. The CDC was shipping germ cultures directly to the Iraqi weapons facility in al-Muthanna.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University has a collection of declassified government documents that detail U.S. support of Saddam's regime. This is the collection that contains a photograph of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Ronald Reagan's Middle East envoy, Donald Rumsfeld, who apparently said nothing to Saddam about his nuclear weapons program or his use of chemical weapons. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/special/iraq/index.htm (The Saddam Hussein Scrapbook, National Security Archive George Washington University)

[slackmaster]

17. Iraq should never have been made into a country

There are too many large groups of people who have not become culturally advanced enough to get along with each other. That kind of situation doesn't lend itself to democracy.

Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, et al are either going to learn to tolerate each other or they're going to be in a state of civil war forever.