Scarborough is giving his readers the usual administration Orwellian line: colonial occupation is liberation.
War leads to peace. If you don't believe me, just ask the leaders of terrorist groups across the Middle East who are now suing for peace.
I'd like a for instance, please. He certainly isn't talking about Zarquawi. He certainly isn't talking about radical groups in Saudi Arabia. He certainly isn't talking about the terrorists -- whoever they were -- who assassinated former Prime Minister Hariri in Lebanon.
This weekend anti-war activists will take to the streets in New York and across the country to protest America's war effort in Iraq. This despite the fact that there is no doubt among all neutral political observers that removing Saddam Hussein from power led to the first-ever free elections in Iraq.
Scarborough leaves out a few important points. Perhaps the most important is that
Bush did not want elections. Instead, the Bushies preferred a series of caucuses that would have been easier for them to control. The elections were held because Ayatollah Sistani insisted on it and could have sent Shias to the streets in mass demonstrations and civil unrest if the US continued to delay them.
Nevertheless, the elections themselves highlight other serious problems in Iraqi society. Were they really successful? They produced a majority in the transitional government for the United Iraqi Alliance, a slate that favors turning Iraq into a kinder, gentler Islamic republic than Iran. This is an improvement over Saddam's brutal tyranny or the colonial designs of Bush and the neocons, but it is not democracy. A democracy is a state where citizenship is universal and equal. If Mr. Scarborough cares to look at Iran, he will see a state where a council of twelve stuffy old men determine if a candidate is a good enough Muslim to run for office. Also, he will see a state where women are subjugated not for any practical, reality-based reason (as if there was one), but simply out of a narrow interpretation of religious dogma. That, too, is an affront to democratic principle. We have reason to be concerned that, as a result of the UIA's victory, equal rights for women is not going to be a high priority for the founding fathers of the new Iraq.
In addition to this, we must also note that a significant segment of the population, Sunni Muslims, chose to abstain from the process. They are either concerned that they will be on the short end in a Shia dominated Iraq or will not accept an Iraq where they do not themselves dominate, regardless of no longer being a numerical majority in Iraq as they once were. The former point of view expresses a fear that there will be no democracy in a Shia-dominated state, while the latter expresses a contempt for democratic principles.
Mr. Scarborough also neglects to discuss what the elections, such as they were, say about Iraqi attitudes about the invasion and occupation. The program of the United Iraqi Alliance also calls for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq and for repealing most of Proconsul Bremer's colonial decrees. As Naomi Klein said,
Iraqi voters gave Bush the purple finger. If the election is as successful as Mr. Scarborough and his allies claim, then they ought to be honest enough to say that the result cannot be read as anything other than a repudiation of US occupation by the Iraqi people.
When Mr. Bush and his allies, including Mr. Scarborough use the word
democracy, they seem to mean bending a developing nation's will to a "free" trade agreement that favors the global north. That's not what I mean by it, but no matter. If Bush, Scarborough and others want to call the imposing of western economic domination with democracy, we should still point out that the Iraqi voters rejected that kind of democracy, too.
Reasonable people simply cannot disagree on the geopolitical reality that those successful elections led to freedom marches in Lebanon, where this week, 1 million citizens demanded the end of Baathist rule and Hezbollah-sponsored terrorism.
It is nonsense to say the reasonable people cannot dispute this assertion. Informed and reasonable can and do. To say that Mr. Bush's saber rattling had anything to do with demonstrations against Syria's continued presence in Lebanon is
post hoc reasoning at its worst. The act that precipitated these demonstrations was the assassination of a popular Lebanese political leader. Moreover, Lebanon, unlike Iraq and most other Arab states, has something more closely resembling democratic institutions in place: Lebanon has an elected parliament; in this parliament sits a functioning opposition to the government; and Lebanon has a press regarded as among the most free and independent in the region, even when compared to the Israeli press. These democratic institutions existed in Lebanon years before Mr. Bush seized power in America and began undermining our own democratic institutions with the Patriot Act, administration-originated fake news reports and planted fake journalists asking softball questions, "free speech zones", suppression of opposition voters in key states, and, getting back to the point, using a deliberate pack of lies in order to initiate a war in Iraq that had no valid rationale based on national security concerns.
What Iraq and Lebanon have in common is that the people of those countries are calling for the removal of foreign troops from their soil and for the economic resources of their respective nations to be used for the benefit of each nation's own people, not necessarily Syrians or Americans. This isn't necessarily democracy, but it is nationalism. Once again, we must point out that in Iraq it is a popular and nationalist reaction against US policy in that country.
In addition, nationalism is on the march in Kurdistan. The Iraqi elections have underscored a long debate in the Kurdish regions of Iraq as to whether the Kurds would be better off as part of an Iraqi federation or as an independent nation. However, we would be wrong to confuse this nationalism with democracy. It does not exclude democratic principles, but does not necessarily embrace them, either.
Like President Bush, Israeli PM Ariel Sharon has told the world that strength is the only way to bring terrorists to the negotiating table. He is being proved right. Likewise, George Bush learned from Ronald Reagan that thugs do not respect concessions, but rather, strength.
Again, Mr. Scarborough engages in
post hoc reasoning and ignores many important facts. Just as the invasion of Iraq did not prevent one suicide bombing in the last two years, neither did it precipitate the conditions that are a cause for some small optimism that there may be a resolution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Ariel Sharon, after years of promoting Israeli expansion into occupied territory and rejecting any peace with the Palestinians, has finally seen that the Palestinian territories cannot be swallowed without also taking in the Palestinian people with it. The demographic time bomb ins ticking; there may already be more Arabs than Jews living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. This would shatter the Zionist dream of an Israel that is at once Jewish and democratic. A Greater Israel would either have to grant Palestinians equal rights, in which case Israel ceases to be a Jewish state, or creates split-level citizenship in which Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza have fewer rights than Jews, in which case Israel ceases to be a democracy. South Africa's experience with that kind of state proved to be a failure and no doubt an Apartheid-like Israel would, too.
Consequently, Sharon has come to realize that Israel needs a sovereign, independent, viable and stable Palestinian state as badly as the Palestinians do. Mr. Bush's hand is nowhere to be seen in this state of affairs.
Rightly or wrongly, Sharon for years rejected negotiations with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Arafat's death provided Sharon with the opportunity to start anew with Mahmoud Abbas, a Palestinian leader he at least doesn't distrust. There are many things that can derail these new hopes for peace between Israel and Palestine, but for now Abbas has persuaded the militants to hold off and see what he can do with Sharon.
As for the Palestinian militants, they, too, may be seeing reason. Their goal of driving Israel into the sea was never obtainable. That they will give peaceful co-existance with a Jewish state next door a chance is a more reasonable apprach. However, Bush had nothing to do with persuading them of this.
In conclusion, Mr. Scarborough's rant is logically fallacious piece of little value. All he is attempting to do is paper over Mr. Bush's multiple failures and give him credit where none is due.
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