WASHINGTON TODAY: Majority rule abroad doesn't always serve U.S. interests

[Judi Lynn]

WASHINGTON TODAY: Majority rule abroad doesn't always serve U.S. interests

TOM RAUM, Associated Press Writer Saturday, December 13, 2003
AP Breaking News

(12-13) 09:42 PST WASHINGTON (AP) --

President Bush has put the spread of democracy at the core of his foreign policy. Unless it takes him where he does not want to go.

Taiwan, for instance.

Bush urged Taiwan last week to cancel a March referendum that communist-run China sees as a dangerous step toward independence. The president's critics saw that as a retreat from democracy-building for the self-ruled island.

Russia offers another example. The administration raised only mild concerns over Russian parliamentary elections swept by allies of President Vladimir Putin, with whom Bush has cultivated close ties, particularly in the fight against terrorism. Human rights monitors from the West said the voting was skewed to benefit Putin's party.

In Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld congratulated a terrorism-fighting ally, Ilham Aliev, on his presidential victory in October; unmentioned were the hundreds arrested in street riots after voting that international observers said was marred by fraud. (snip/...)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/12/13/national1242EST0506.DTL

[DrBB]

1. ——Insert obvious ironic remark here——

nt

[DoctorMyEyes]

2. like baked alaska

warm on the outside, cold on the inside.

I'm going to have to remember that line.

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Bwahahaha!!

In Iraq, the problem getting democracy in place -- ideally, for Bush, before next year's White House election -- is complicated by the likelihood that any honest national election would empower the majority Muslim Shiites. That raises concerns of the prospect of Iraq becoming an Iranian-style, clergy-ruled state.

I'll be the first to admit that an Islamic republic is not a democracy (no matter how many people vote it in), but it beats colonial occupation.

The truth is that Bush wouldn't mind an Islamic republic in Iraq a bit as long as the new government continues to sell the country out from under the feet of the people to Bush's corporate cronies. Of course, no real democracy would ever allow that and, in all likelihood, neither would an Islamic republic seeking broad popular support.

On another matter, I am disappointed that the article fails to point out that there is another country in which Bush finds democracy a threat to his lusts. That would be this one, which voted to elect somebody else president three years ago.

[central scrutinizer]

4. nothing new here

just ask the people of Chile or Nicaragua or Grenada or Iran or .....

[sungkathak]

5. Slaughter for "freedom".

Slaughter for "freedom".

Quote. "A truly foolish adventure

proved a gigantic disaster by almost every measure.


What has been the human cost of the invasion? The most authoritative estimate of Iraqi civilian war deaths puts the figure at between 7376 and 9178. Since the formal end of hostilities a further 2200 or so Iraqi civilians have died at coalition hands. Strangely enough, no one knows, even approximately, how many Iraqi soldiers were killed. The humanitarian group Medact recently suggested that the number might be as low as 13,500 or as high as 45,000.

Coalition casualties are precisely known. More than 400 soldiers have died. Recently, the Pentagon revealed that 9000 US soldiers had been evacuated as a result of serious injury or illness, 2000 because of war wounds, 500 because of psychiatric breakdown.

What, then, beyond their casualties, have the Iraqi people experienced since the invasion? According to US occupation authorities, supplies of electricity and clean water have now finally reached their (dismal) pre-invasion levels. Urban Iraq faces massive unemployment. According to one common figure, 60 per cent of young men in Baghdad have no work. Health problems of Iraqis seem even worse than before the invasion; that is, after a decade of crippling economic sanctions.

These problems are overshadowed in the daily life of urban Iraqis by something quite new. Before the invasion Saddam Hussein set free 100,000 hardened criminals. The occupying powers subsequently dismantled Iraq's army and most of its police. Iraq is awash with weapons. The consequence of all this is the near-total breakdown of law and order. In a recent Gallup poll, 94 per cent of Iraqis said they felt more insecure now than under Saddam; 86 per cent said they or their families felt fearful about leaving their homes at night.

An enterprising American journalist, Jerry Fleischmann, visited the Baghdad morgue in September. He discovered that while before the invasion the morgue investigated 20 firearms deaths a month, in August 2003 it investigated 581. A British journalist, Suzanne Goldenberg, recently examined the post- invasion situation of women in Baghdad. She heard story after story of vicious assault and rape. "Under US occupation," she concluded, "working women have reordered their lives, wearing hijab for the first time, or travelling with male relatives. Some barely venture out at all."

Through opinion polls we now know a great deal about what the people of Iraq think of the invasion of their country. According to the recent Gallup poll, 43 per cent believe America invaded to "rob Iraq's oil"; 37 per cent to get rid of Saddam Hussein; 6 per cent to change the Middle East in the interest of Israel; 5 per cent to assist the Iraqi people; 4 per cent to destroy WMDs; 1 per cent to introduce democracy.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/16/1068917668650.html