Well, i wrote a long post about this, but what do i know about these things, anyway. I like you, Jim, and if it makes you feel better, thinking that the shrewd marketers that are governing your country are really, in the root of it, nice people, then so be it. I think the extreme right will be in power in the USA for a long time, so we may as well find reasons to be happy with them. May we all stay out of trouble and out of the gears of the great war machine. May we never become personally evil.
Thanks, Glauber. These are NOT nice people, IMO.
I guess i’m disappointed that you approve of what they’re doing in this country and abroad, but you’re entitled to your opinion.
I never approved of anything. Well, I do approve of pressing Egypt
and the Saudis to democratize, but is that so bad?
And I’m rooting for democracy in Iraq.
I’m principally trying to figure out what’s happening.
Here’s Bush. Is it really unthinkable that he means it?
If he does, it’s consistent with our efforts leading
to catastrophe.
Bush Says Authoritarian Rule in Mideast Should End
1 hour, 13 minutes ago
[Add to My Yahoo!] Top Stories - Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) said on Tuesday authoritarian rule in the Middle East is the “last gasp of a discredited past” and he demanded Syria pull troops out of Lebanon before Lebanese parliamentary elections in May.
Bush used a wide-ranging speech at the National Defense University to lend verbal support to what he called a trend toward democracy in the Middle East.
“Suddenly the thaw has begun,” he declared.
Bush specifically pointed to Lebanon, where a pro-Syrian government has fallen due to protests over the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, and where Syria is under strong pressure to withdraw 14,000 troops as well as intelligence personnel.
Bush quoted one Lebanese observer he did not identify as saying that “democracy is knocking at the door of this country and if it’s successful in Lebanon it is going to ring the doors of every Arab regime.”
He called on Syria to completely withdraw its forces. “All Syrian military forces and intelligence personnel must withdraw before the Lebanese elections for those elections to be free and fair,” he said.
Bush said U.S. policy is no longer geared toward supporting authoritarian rule in the Middle East in the name of stability.
“The advance of hope in the Middle East requires new thinking in the region. By now it should be clear that authoritarian rule is not the wave of the future. It is the last gasp of a discredited past,” he said.
Thanks for listening, people. Rant over.
Surely your’e not telling us that the US army is digging into all these huge new bases just for the short term, are you ?
( And paving over Babylon in the process !).
What has happened to the idea of the US footprint in the region ? ( Not to mention the billions of dollars oil revenues so far stolen from the Iraqis).
It would be interesting to know what the relation is NOW between Iraq (in the body of Sistani ) and Iran.
Sistani’s instructions to tha faithful to go out and vote were quite possibly with a view to later changes once to US is out of the way, the hope of which early exit most of the returned parties had expressed in their manifestos.
I have just begun to wonder if, having exported all American jobs to China before long, the valiant Mr Bush intends to concentrate the US economy on rice production ?
It is a blatant attempt to increase enlistment in the armed forces by removing the other options for employment.
Denny
Meanwhile, the US government now is looking into exporting illegal war prisoners from Guantanamo:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4340921.stm
It appears that Guantanamo is less protected from the ravages of the legal system than the government had thought.
Well they have plenty of places lined up for the usual receipt of victims kidnapped for the purposes of interrogation under torture.
All the places they pretend to disapprove of except when they are convenient for their second hand criminal activities.
Interesting – but overly simplistic. Your hypothesis is leaving out the agenda outlined in the Project for the New American Century and the Bush Administration’s National Security Strategy. The neocon’s self-proclaimed plan to take advantage of this “window of opportunity” to cease control of the world’s resources is cloaked in the concept of exporting democracy and fighting terrorism. Buying into that charade is far less realistic than the folks who are chanting, “'No blood for oil!” When you investigate the US relationship with Israel, the involvement with the Taliban in their war against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, US complicity with totalitarian regimes in the region etc., the pattern has no correlation with democracy. The exporting of democracy is a smoke screen for US imperialist predilections.
I quite agree with Jack and Andrew. Claims that the US is aiding the development of democracy is a smoke screen. Witness the years of support we have offered to dictators in Asia, Africa, and South and Central America. I find Jim Stone’s assertion of lofty motives in American government to be both wishful and naive.
Were the US serious about democracy we would be developing an educated middle-class in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, as well as in El Salvador and Guatemala. Instead we send financial and military aid to the wealthiest and most repressive families in our client states. When US politicians and policy makers talk about ‘democracy’ they really mean ‘free-market capitalism.’ ‘Freedom’ means ‘profit.’
Our current admnistration is continuing World War IV, which in fact started with the Carter administration and was brought to full-scale, if inept, implementation with Reagan and developed by the senior Bush. Carter at first offered the politically disastrous concept of belt-tightening. Americans refused to accept gas-rationing and the need both to conserve and to seek alternate forms of energy.
American “exceptionalism” led to the articulated concept of the right that Americans have to a life style based on unlimited cheap oil.
There is an excellent article to this effect in the current Wilson Quarterly.
I think we are doing this with the rebuilding of medical schools and professional schools in Iraq. I don’t know much about the situation in central America, but it isn’t a large concern of ours. What we should bear in mind while evaluating foreign policy is the fact that our government is acting in the interests of the United States, as it sees them, and thus is primarily concerned, not with developing other countries, but with defending our own. This defense is best realized by imposing democracy on others, as, so we are told, democracies do not war with each other. You can debate the ethics of the approach, but foreign policy is inherently utilitarian and nationalistic, and rightly so. We wouldn’t want our country always choosing what’s best for, say, Nauru.
It may well become apparant soon ( and I hope not ) That Bush and Blair have chosen to create a theocracy in Iraq, and one which as usual shows contempt for women according to western views.
In fairness I didn’t mean to ascribe ‘lofty motives’–I think we think
democracy in the middle east is in our interest. Realpolitik.
It’'s hardly naive;
there is considerable evidence, both in actions and in words,
that one of the reasons the admin invaded Iraq was to ‘sort out’
the middle east, largely by creating liberal democracies.
These intentions were expressed by neo-cons in advance of
the bush admin.
As to the evidence for this and an extensivediscussion of the rest of what you say, you will find it on the political thread in the pub, if you’re interested, where we’ve really gone into this in depth, including documentation.
Here’s something I posted on the Pub political thread, more there.
'Here’s something from Joseph Circione (sp?), Senior Associate
at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
From ‘Origins of Regime Change in Iraq.’
Immediately after September 11, Paul Wolfowitz and other officials urged President Bush to attack Iraq. New Yorker writer Mark Danner notes as part of a PBS Frontline special that they saw this as a “new opportunity presented by the war on terror-that is, an opportunity to argue to the public that Iraq presented a vital danger to the United States.” Colin Powell and the joint chiefs opposed them. “Powell’s view was that Wolfowitz was fixated on Iraq, that they were looking for any excuse to bring Iraq into this,” Washington Post reporter Dan Balz told Frontline. Powell won, but briefly.
Neo-conservative writers began to urge regime change as part of a larger strategy for remaking the Middle East. In June 2002, Michael Kelly wrote that a democratic Iraq and Palestine “will revolutionize the power dynamic in the Middle East?A majority of Arabs will come to see America as the essential ally.”
“Change toward democratic regimes in Tehran and Baghdad would unleash a tsunami across the Islamic world,” claimed Joshua Muravchik in August of that year. Michael Ledeen on September 4, 2002, called for the US to launch “a vast democratic revolution to liberate all the peoples of the Middle East?It is impossible to imagine that the Iranian people would tolerate tyranny in their own country once freedom had come to Iraq. Syria would follow in short order.”
Democracy experts, including Carnegie’s Tom Carothers, call this vision “a dangerous fantasy.” But on September 12, President Bush embraced the strategy when he told the United Nations, “The people of Iraq can shake off their captivity. They can one day join a democratic Afghanistan and a democratic Palestine, inspiring reforms throughout the Muslim world.” The president seems to have absorbed the entire expansive strategy. Now, for him, regime change in Iraq is not the end, it is just the beginning.
Click here for all these documents and more insight into the people and strategy behind the occupation of Iraq.
Joseph Cirincione is a Senior Associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.’
The women of Iraq who are being murdered for showing an ankle are not too likely to feel liberated, although some of them who welcome the reimposition of Sharia law may be resigned to their new found slave like role.
They can thank Mr Bush for what may well be many years of oppression. Same goes for those who have been glad to live in a secular society.
It looks like Bush has wrecked that as well !
multi-talented little feller, ain’t he?
Of course, he could have done nothing, which is what his opponents would have liked, and then the women would have been murdered after they were raped, just for fun, by Saddam or his sons. Personally, I don’t belive your scenario without a lot more proof.
It doesn’t look like you will have to wait long !