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Empire Notes
"We don't seek empires. We're not imperialistic. We never have been. I
can't imagine why you'd even ask the question." Donald Rumsfeld,
questioned by an al-Jazeera correspondent, April 29, 2003.
"No one can now doubt the word of America," George W. Bush, State of
the Union, January 20, 2004.
November 22, 2004 Radio Commentary -- Democracy in
Iraq
Over the last few years, we have been told repeatedly that a cabal of
authoritarian statists who are doing their best to destroy democracy in
this country is seized by some all-consuming idealist fervor for
building democracy abroad, especially in the Middle East. So strongly
has this story taken hold that no fact seems to get in its way.
Recently, this propaganda reached a height of surrealism not seen in
many years. As U.S. forces are still working diligently to erase and
cover up the evidence of the massacre, we hear that the Guernica-style
bombardment of Fallujah, in which the entire adult male population was
declared to be the enemy, where civilians were often turned back and
kept from fleeing the area, where entire areas of the city have been
“pancaked,” was done in the service of democracy.
So grotesque is this claim that had anyone else made it we would all be
laughing. It recalls the famous quotation attributed to some
U.S.-supported military dictator – “I am in favor of democracy and
anyone who is against it I will jail, I will crush.”
Throughout this whole process, there has been literally no shred of
evidence that the United States wants to do anything except impose on
Iraq a government of its own making, that will do its bidding. The
cynicism shown by the Bush administration in the use of concepts like
democracy or elections has been staggering.
A year ago, the overt plan of the Coalition Provisional Authority was
to leave the U.S.-appointed imperial viceroy, Paul Bremer, in power
indefinitely. When people asked why no national elections were even
being planned, the usual answer was that it would take a great deal of
time to do a national census, a necessary prerequisite to voter
registration.
Critics suggested that the registration cards associated with the
extensive food-rationing system instituted by Saddam’s government in
order to keep Iraqis from starving under the comprehensive sanctions
levied on them in the 1990’s could be used as a basis, or at least as a
beginning, for voter registration. This idea was dismissed out of hand.
Pressed to defend his decision to avoid elections entirely, Paul Bremer
said, "At present there's no electoral commission, there's no electoral
law, there are no political party laws, there's no census, there's no
voter registration, there are no electoral constituencies. There are
none of the things that you need to conduct a legitimate and effective
election here in the next six months."
Plans for elections were only instituted when Ayatollah Ali Sistani
held massive demonstrations in the streets and used the clear threat of
calling for Shi’a to oppose the occupation by any means necessary to
force Bremer to change his mind.
Now, all of a sudden, by magic, the month of November is the month of
voter registration in Iraq. Suddenly, we don’t need a census; lists
have been compiled by using, you guessed it, the food ration
registration lists as the basis.
On June 28, in the so-called “transfer of sovereignty,” hailed as a
great step for democracy, we replaced the Governing Council, a
commission with representatives of the exile political parties that
promised to collaborate with the coalition, with Ayad Allawi, who has
essentially been given all power in Iraq that doesn’t lie in the hands
of the U.S. military. The Governing Council was not representative and
the major parties in it frequently used repression, but for all its
faults occasionally showed some spark of independence – most notably
during the April assault on Fallujah, when half of it threatened to
resign if the assault wasn’t called off.
Allawi, on the other hand, is a dictator who has closed down
Al-jazeera’s Baghdad office, promulgated a requirement that all media
use government-approved description of the resistance and of military
assaults against them, cracked down brutally on basic freedoms, invaded
Iraq’s most important Sunni mosque during prayers, and gleefully
assented to the massive assaults on Najaf in August and Fallujah in
November. He is quite self-consciously setting himself up as the new
Saddam. And have no doubt that, if there are elections in January, they
will be as cheap shams as any ever staged by any of the dictators we
backed over the course of the 20th century.
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"Report
from Baghdad -- Hospital Closings and U.S. War Crimes "Report
from Baghdad -- Winning Hearts and Minds"Report
from Fallujah -- Destroying a Town in Order to "Save" it"Report
from Baghdad -- Opening the Gates of Hell"War
on Terrorism" Makes Us All Less Safe Bush
-- Is the Tide Turning?Perle and
FrumIntelligence
Failure Kerry
vs. Dean SOU
2004: Myth and
Reality |