As discussed in part 1, conservatives love to trot out the democratic pony . . . if, and only if, it suits their purposes. When democracy runs counter to the goals of corporatism however, corporatism wins every time. We saw it in Iran in 1957 when oil interests worked through western powers to depose the elected government and re-impose the Shah. We saw it in Guatemala where the will of United Fruit trumped the will of the majority, and in South America when we installed a brutal dictator and future international criminal named Augusto Pinochet rather than allow copper mines to be nationalized.
The “Iran-Contra scandal” was all about replacing a democratically elected government in Nicaragua with a right-wing dictatorship more amenable to corporate interests, even when Congress expressed the will of the American majority by outlawing such help.
Saudi Arabia
Despite decades of conservatives overthrowing any elected government that doesn’t bow low enough to US corporate interests, President George W. Bush has the unmitigated hypocrisy to utter phrases like this in a recent State of the Union address:
“Others understand the historic importance of our work. The terrorists know. They know that a vibrant, successful democracy at the heart of the Middle East will discredit their radical ideology of hate.”
“Democracy in the heart of the Middle East?” . . . if establishing democracy really were the top priority for Bush, why does he nuzzle like a horny teenager every Prince and Sheik that comes to the Rose Garden.
One would think that if democracy were really the goal, we would be pressuring Saudi Arabia—a country RE-NAMED for the house of Saud after they massacred the previous royal family in a bloody coup—to become democratic.
China
But one need only look to W’s father to see that democracy is far from the number one goal. In April to June 1989 when the elder Bush was president, hundreds of thousands of democratic activists led by university students gathered in Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing. For weeks, they demanded representative democracy. Art students even carved a large Statue of Liberty which they held triumphantly aloft.
Of course the uprising was mercilessly crushed, of course thousands of non-violent citizens were killed for nothing more than demanding democracy, and of course the elder Bush did nothing except join in a half-hearted weapons embargo.
Given a choice between supporting democracy or supporting Wal-Mart sweatshops churning out cheap junk for American consumers, corporatism wins every time. In fact, the Bush family is heavily invested in maintaining this “dictatorship of the proletariat.” No less than family patriarch Prescott Bush (recently deceased) made millions exploiting the political system in place in China. He and Japanese investors built the first golf course in China in 1988, and his company was able to skirt international sanctions and import communications when sanctions were in place.
Palestine
In the 2004 Republican National Convention, Bush read the following lines with seeming conviction: “We believe in the transformational power of liberty: The wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom. As the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq seize the moment, their example will send a message of hope throughout a vital region. Palestinians will hear the message that democracy and reform are within their reach, and so is peace with our good friend, Israel.” (Applause.)
Whoops.
Since then, the Palestinians have indeed heard the message of democracy, and what they voted for is not “peace with our good friend Israel” but a Hamas government vowing direct confrontation with Israel. At the time of this writing, Hamas agents are holding an Israeli soldier hostage asking that Palestinian women and children held by Israel be released. Instead of recognized the legitimate government established by Palestine, the US has led a coalition to embargo trade and cut off funding even though these same western powers had no problem supporting the unelected—and massively corrupt—rule of Yassir Arafat.
When Bush said in his 2006 State of the Union address that “the United States of America supports democratic reform across the broader Middle East,” he forgot the important caveat “as long as that democracy supports American corporate interests.” If it doesn’t, George W. Bush leads the world in trying to destroy it.
Iraq
Who could forget the purple fingers held up for the world to see in Iraq’s first election? The image was highlighted in Bush’s State of the Union of 2004. Two years later, Bush opined that “brutality has not stopped the dramatic progress of a new democracy. In less than three years, the nation has gone from dictatorship to liberation, to sovereignty, to a constitution, to national elections.”
Left out of this convoluted twist to pat himself on the back is Bush’s opposition to real freedom from day one. Former BBC reporter Greg Palast among others has pointed out that our first “viceroy” in Iraq, General Jack Garner, was unceremoniously replaced when he actually moved plans forward to hold Iraqi elections. His successor, L. Paul Bremer, understood well the Bush mandate to stall direct elections as long as possible. As one pundit put it, “you can have democracy or you can have control—but you can’t have both.” TeamBush invaded Iraq for control. They weren’t about to cede it to the will of the Iraqis.
Eventually, the peaceful street protests led by Shia mullahs forced elections to take place, street protests barely acknowledged by the US media.
In the constant din extolling the “free elections in Iraq,” TeamBush also takes pains to never mention WHAT the Iraqis are voting for. Which candidates won and which candidates lost in Iraq? And why?
These questions are never even asked let alone answered by the Bush government.
The answers bode ill for the future of democracy in Iraq. The Iraqi people are voting for candidates that oppose the continued occupation of their country most strongly. If BushCo. truly respected Iraqi democracy, he would do what a vast majority of Iraqis—and now Americans as well—want. He would begin an immediate pull-out of American forces of Iraq.
Haiti, Nepal, and Venezuela
Many other examples of conservatives opposing democracy can be cited. But for the sake of brevity, let’s quickly consider three more: Haiti, Nepal, and Venezuela. In 2004, George W. Bush followed a long tradition of meddling in Haiti’s internal affairs by helping to oust duly-elected and left-leaning Jacques Aristide and aiding a right-wing military coup. In contrast, Bill Clinton sent in the military to protect Aristide after an attempted coup during his administration.
Haiti was actually the first country to declare independence in the Western Hemisphere after the United States, leading one to believe that the US government must have fully supported this fellow traveler seeking to cast off its European overlords. In fact, the US was totally opposed, for the uprising in Haiti was led by former slaves. The US government could hardly support a slave revolt in Haiti while continuing to maintain its own “peculiar institution” here.
So from the very beginning, corporate power structures—the moneyed interests—have undermined true democracy. Jacques Aristide maintains to this day that US officials backed by marines “kidnapped” him and forced him into exile.
In the poor but resource-rich country of Nepal, BushCo. continues to prop up a rapidly disintegrating feudal monarchy. World intransigence in helping to establish democracy in Nepal has led to the almost inevitable reaction of powerless peasants banding together in a Maoist style revolution. Now instead of a peaceful transition to democracy, we witness the slow but inexorable march of people to seize power from an aristocracy that only makes headlines when a Prince guns down his relatives at breakfast. Once again, by supporting “stability” (or the opportunity for business to maintain the status quo) instead of democracy, the United States finds itself again an unwitting ally of communist revolution. (See for instance Vietnam’s struggle for independence against France.)
Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has been elected President twice. That makes little difference to the Bush administration who opposes any leader who effectively reduces wealth inequality. Conservatives are heavily vested in the self-serving notion that re-distributing wealth never works, and every time a country comes along that proves this shibboleth wrong, like Nicaragua and now Venezuela, it must be destroyed lest others learn from their example.
Reminded of Chavez’s successful elections, Donald Rumsfeld dismissed and disrespect it by saying that “Hitler was elected too” (this widely quoted “fact” is actually untrue—Hitler was never elected to any national office). Bush mouthpiece Pat Robertson inveighed that Chavez should be “executed,” a desire that the White House in no way disassociated itself from.
The Bush administration actually applauded and supported the April 2002 military coup that briefly displaced Chavez. Michael Shifter writes in the journal Foreign Affairs that “Washington’s rush to express approval for such a blatantly unconstitutional act undermined U.S. credibility on the democracy issue.”
Because of the threats and bullying from the US, Chavez has allied himself with Iran and its alleged desire to develop a nuclear weapon. Chavez rightly sees nuclear weaponry as a way to protect his country from interference from a United States that has no respect for his country’s democracy.
So there you have it: nations who are as far from democracies as one can get such as China, Saudi Arabia, and Nepal are our “staunch allies,” and nations who are true democracies such as Palestine, Iraq, Haiti, and Venezuela face dire opposition, threats, boycotts, coups and even occupation by the US.
In part 3, we’ll examine how conservatives not only undermine democracy overseas, but how the Bush administration has succeeded in imposing the will of the minority on the American people here at home.
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Excellent overview.
