by John Bottoms

In the torrent of lies over the upcoming Iraq war, arguably the most disingenuous claim by the Bush regime is their stated intention to build a democracy in Iraq.  Their actions both at home and abroad demonstrate that democracy is the farthest thing from their minds. 

The Bushites seem dead set on starting a war with Iraq that a bare majority of Americans might support, and only then with qualifications if the polling questions are asked just right.  Congress has given Bush the green light despite overwhelming anti-war calls from constituents.  Secrecy is the order of the day in Washington with Ashcroft gutting the Freedom of Information Act, which came into its own in the post-Watergate era to limit abuses of presidential power, and declaring basically all presidential documents from the last 20 years privileged information.  They have effectively suspended habeas corpus for thousands of political prisoners in the U.S. by calling them terrorists, and violated international conventions for prisoners of war in Guantanamo Bay by labeling them “enemy combatants.”  They violate the laws of several states, in which the voters have legalized medical marijuana, by threatening doctors and arresting medical marijuana activists and users. 

Such an arrogant disregard for democracy is the rule for the U.S. government, especially in times of war.  The most blatant example is Lincoln's war, in which he disregarded the majority wishes of southern Americans to have their own government, imprisoned thousands of northern dissenters and political adversaries without trial, and invaded the south without the consent of Congress.  It took FDR and his internationalist clique two years of conniving to get the U.S. into WWII against the wishes of a sizable majority of Americans, and only then by manipulating the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  LBJ lied to the American people and Congress about the Gulf of Tonkin incident to get the U.S. into his Southeast Asian war.  In 1990, Bush 41 gave Iraq the green light to invade Kuwait, then lied about Iraqi atrocities and plans to invade Saudi Arabia before starting the Gulf War. 

So how's the “nation building” coming along in America's other recent conquests?  Afghanistan's “election” of Hamid Karzai by a hastily constructed loya jirga (grand tribal council) provides nothing more than a thin veneer of democracy for a regime fully dependent on U.S. military and economic support.  The U.S. and its allies are building an Afghan National Army under the direct rule of their puppet president, leaving the alliance of tribes which helped oust the Taliban, as well as Karzai's multi-ethnic advisers, out in the political cold.  This rejection of shared power among the country's tribal factions in favor of a centralized military under the command of a single political head is a recipe for a police state and eventual civil war, not a democracy.  Only his American bodyguards protect the Afghan ruler from assassination from one of his many disaffected countrymen. 

Kosovo was “saved” from Serbian aggression by U.S. (NATO) military action in 1999, and is now effectively a colony of the U.N.  It has been saddled with “the first modern political constitution to explicitly rule out democracy,” the preamble of which states that the “will of the people” is just one of the “relevant factors” to be considered by the international ruling committee. 

Then there are the numerous dictators which the U.S. has installed or supported over the years in Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Panama, Chile, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, and the Philippines to name just a few. 

So much for U.S. support for democracy abroad.  Assuming the U.S. successfully conquers Iraq, it may be ruled by an appointed American general, much like Japan after WWII, or it may be split into several jurisdictions with hand-picked rulers possibly including Jordan's King Abdullah, though he denies any interest.  Whatever government is eventually installed in Baghdad, we can be sure it will favor the U.S. government and U.S. oil company interests, with little regard for the will of the Iraqi people. 

But things get much more interesting if the Iraq attack goes badly (as predicted by private intelligence provider Stratfor) leading us down the road toward another Vietnam, or if the war unleashes a wave of anti-American terrorism right on Bush’s political doorstep.  When the voter backlash against Bush and all those who have supported him finally comes crashing down, will he just slink away in shame like LBJ in '68, or will we be shown the hypocrisy of all his democracy talk, as his people fix elections, or even create some “national emergency” excuse to “postpone” them indefinitely?  That’s when we’ll find out if it’s really true that “if voting really mattered, they wouldn't let us do it.”