WHAT PRICE FAILURE?
One major goal of the neocon (more correctly neo-fascist since they're not remotely conservative) ideologues in control of the U.S. government, has been to establish a democratic, market-based-economy government in Iraq as the first step in exporting this type of regime to the entire Middle East (and then to the whole world) using our military superiority to bring this all about. The Bushies have been proclaiming to the world that the elections scheduled for Jan. 30, will make this goal, as far as Iraq goes, an accomplished fact. There is, of course, no chance of that happening. As the author of this report says, "Elections do not make democracies; democracies make elections." The exercise on Jan. 30 is likely to result in a civil war and even if that is avoided a non-representative government will be created that will not resemble a "democracy."
I've made references here before to the book Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War On Terror. It's author, "Anonymous" is actually Michael Scheuer, a long-time CIA analyst, and one of those who recently left the agency as part of the Bush inspired Porter Goss purge. I'm not in 100% agreement with Scheuer, but I think he is absolutely on target as to what the Bush administration neocons (neo-fascists) have been doing wrong. (I differ on some of his views as to what we should do instead.) In Imperial Hubris, a chapter subheading notes that "Democracy (is) America's Least Exportable Commodity." He quotes historian Joshua Mitchell who warned against our leaders' "glib assurances that democracy could be easily built abroad.... American foreign policy in Afganistan and Iraq is driven by an idea so inscribed on the American psyche that it amounts to a syndrome: Cast off the tyrannical leaders and citizens... will band together to bring about that freedom a tyrant's presence precluded. It happened in America; surely it will happen elsewhere.... In both Afganistan and Iraq we have won the war, but we stand in danger of losing what we won because our foreign policy suffers from the 'King George Syndrome.' Freedom is neither a spontaneous nor a universal aspiration. Other 'goods' captivate the minds of other people from other lands; order, honor and tribal loyalties being most obvious. And because these other goods (values) orient these people no less powerfully than freedom orients us, we are apt to be sorely surprised when people who are 'liberated' turn to new tyrants who can assume order.... the tyrants we depose will be (seen as) preferable to the chaos a 'liberated' people will initially endure; that honor is still the currency of value in the Middle East, more so than goods and services; and that affiliation of blood (tribal loyalties) is immensely more important than the sovereignty of the individual citizen."
Scheuer then goes on to say, "The tragedy-producing potential of this arrogance (thinking we can impose our form of government wherever we choose) is increased because it is wrapped in American hubris that has forgotten... or has never learned the nature and length of the arduous and often bloody struggle Americans have waged to get to their present stage of self-government." He adds that that struggle goes back far beyond 1776 or even Jamestown, but at least to 1215 when the English barons forced King John to agree to the Magna Carta, and has been marked by "brutal and bloody events and personalities, as well as by civil war, protracted legal struggles, urban riots, noble lives sacrificed, voting fraud, lynchings, ethnic and racial violence, labor-business clashes and virtually every form of hatred, predjudice and bigotry.... The democratic system in America today did not magically appear, nor was it wished into existance."
Today in our confrontation with Osama bin Laden and militant, fundamentalist Islam, Scheuer writes, our leaders "must recognize that the solution to this conflict can never be a... quick transformation of the Muslim world to a Western-style democratic system....Whether or not an Islamic democracy is possible, we must recognize that our historical experience and the society it has produced are uniquely our own.... To attempt more is to try to do the impossible and the unwanted... and to force upon other peoples a system of government and society there is little indication they want and every indication they will fight." Adding to the difficulty is the U.S. record over the last half century of supporting tyrannies (including Saddam Hussein's when it suited us) which "entirely discredits for Muslims any claim we make of intending to build democracies. The credibility issues that result from America's proven taste for any Muslim tyrant who maintains internal order and stability, peace with Israel, and low oil prices, destroys what little democracy-building potential we may possess.... We garner no respect, but are despised for our hypocrisy and fecklessness.... Only when U.S. leaders stop believing and preaching that bin Laden and his allies are attacking us for what we are and what we think, and instead clearly state that they are attacking us for what we do, can we put aside our ill-advised and hallucinatory crusade for democracy..." in the Middle East.
The following essay examines the prospects of "magically" bringing democracy to Iraq on January 30. Edwin Black is the author of "Banking on Baghdad, Inside Iraq's 7,000-Year History of War, Profit, and Conflict," from which this report is adapted. It appeared in Newsday, Jan. 12, and was posted online by Common Dreams News Center, http://www.commondreams.org , January 20, 2005. -- Bryce
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Published on Wednesday, January 12, 2005 by the Long Island, NY Newsday |
The Projected Winner in Iraq: Failure |
by Edwin Black |
Iraq's proposed elections later this month are a lose-lose proposition. Most Sunni and Kurdish political parties have either formally withdrawn or are threatening to because the insurgency has now targeted the entire electoral process. That reality has been driven home daily. Last month, a grenade was tossed into a school with a note warning the building to not become a polling place. Weeks ago, an election commissioner on Baghdad's main street was dragged from his car in broad daylight and shot in the head by men who didn't even mask their faces. (And just yesterday, three Shia candidates for office in the Jan. 30 elections were assassinated! - BB) Osama bin Laden has declared in an audiotape that those who participate in the election - even by voting - will be deemed infidels and targeted. Electoral commissioners have resigned en masse. The Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq's highest Sunni religious authority, has demanded all Sunnis boycott the election. But the Shias are adamant that elections proceed. Their supreme religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Sistani, has decreed that voting is the highest religious obligation. Sistani rebuffed recent Sunni-Kurd election delay requests, saying the question was "not even up for discussion." Indeed, a delay makes no sense, as the insurgency becomes only more lethal with each day. Hence, Arab Sunnis and Kurds - together some 40 percent of the population - are now on an electoral collision course with the majority Shias, who compose approximately 60 percent. The dynamics of this looming showdown embody the very ethnic torrents that have plagued Iraq for centuries. Minority Sunnis and majority Shias have massacred and oppressed each other in Iraq since the seventh century, taking time off to do the same for minorities such as Armenians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Jews and Kurds. Since the 1920s, Sunni Ba'athist strongmen have ruled, Saddam Hussein being the latest. The concept of one-man one- vote, in which the results will parallel the religious groups, automatically guarantees that the Shia majority will finally seize control of the nation, settling old scores and disenfranchising everyone else. This only sets the stage for another civil war. Historically, the assumption or seizure of authority in Iraq has never constituted a true representative government accepted by the warring tribal factions, but rather an expression of ethnic supremacy. More and more, the Jan. 30 vote seems not a national election, but a mainly Shia election. So even if the election takes place, even if the Shias deliver a statistical majority for the turnout, the forces of Sunni and insurgent rejection will demonize the results and elected officials, thus further plunging the populace into violence. Adding a volatile dimension is the distinct possibility that majority Shia rule will not propel the nation toward Western-style democracy, but speed it toward an Iranian-style theocracy. Shia Iran and the dominant Shia holy cities such as Najaf have been joined at the hip and the heart for centuries. Citizens on both sides of the border freely pass and function jointly in matters religious, spiritual and social. Should a Shia-controlled Iraq legislate itself into an Iranian- style theocracy, and even consider a pan-Islamic confederacy, the ramifications are towering. Such bi-national unions in the Islamic Middle East have been common since World War II. The people of Iraq have never wanted Western-style pluralistic democracy or elections. The idea has always been imposed from abroad. In 1920, the nations of the Middle East were created where no nations had previously existed by Western oil imperialism and the League of Nations - this to validate under international law the post-World War I oil monopolies France and England had created. Pro-western monarchs and other rulers were installed to sign on the dotted line, legitimizing Western oil monopolies. At the same time, the Western capitals spurned the Arab national movement. When the Arabs hear the term "democracy," they hear a code word for "stable environment for oil." A post-election Iraq will resemble pre-election Iraq, with a savage insurgency determined to sabotage the government. America will then have to decide if it is still willing to hold the invented nation together with political thumbtacks and military muscle, or support the forces of ethnic partition. Either way, we have no alternative but to survive in Iraq long enough to intelligently withdraw. That will require alternative energy resources to detach us from this place where we are not wanted, where we should not be, and upon which our industrialized world is now dependent. Iraq, the so-called Cradle of Civilization, has a 7,000-year head start on the United States and Britain. If its people wanted a pluralistic democracy, they could have created one without a permission slip from Washington or London. Elections do not make democracies; democracies make elections. ************************** NOTICE: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, environmental, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and/or educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use," you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. -- Bryce |