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Who
will be the next victim
of US democracy?
by Patrick Seale
November, 2003
President
George W Bush's "democracy" speech of November 6 is still
reverberating round the world. It has aroused as much puzzlement
as hostility. What can he possibly mean by saying that "the
United States has adopted a new policy, a forward strategy of freedom
in the Middle East"? Is the US preparing to administer a dose
of its Iraqi medicine to other states in the area? Has the neo-con
agenda of softening up the area to make it comply with US and Israeli
demands been given a new lease of life? Should Damascus and Tehran,
the butt of Bush's particular insults, now fear attack?
Or, as many suspect, was Bush's speech mere empty rhetoric, simply
the latest illustration of his own mediocrity and of the moral and
political bankruptcy of his Administration?
There is an especial irony in Bush criticising Syria and Iran as
illegitimate dictatorships, seeing that it was the United States
which destroyed Syria's young parliamentary democracy in 1949, when
it lent a hand to Colonel Husni Al Zaim's coup d'état, and
it was the US again (with help from Britain) that overthrew Iran's
elected prime minister Mohammed Musaddiq in 1953 and restored the
shah to power as an American puppet. "I owe my throne to God,
my people, my army – and to you," sobbed the grateful
potentate to Kermit Roosevelt, the CIA man who organised the coup.
Sanctions
The US Senate has now overwhelmingly approved the Syria Accountability
and Lebanese Sovereignty Act, which imposes new American economic
and diplomatic sanctions on Damascus for its support for radical
Palestinian groups and for the Lebanese resistance movement, Hezbollah.
Promoted by venal Congressmen and pro-Israeli lobbyists in Washington,
aided by Maronite extremists, the message of the Act is that any
resistance to Israeli aggression and expansion is a crime.
What sort of "freedom" is Bush planning to export? Is
it the freedom he brought to the 20,000 Iraqi civilians and soldiers
killed and the 20,000-30,000 wounded since last March's invasion?
Or the 5,000 Iraqis herded into detention camps in their own country?
Or the half a million Iraqi children who died as the result of 13
years of punitive sanctions? Or does he mean by freedom the long-term
health and environmental damage inflicted on Iraq?
Or the daily toll of ordinary Afghans – demonised as "Taliban"
– killed by US troops as they comb the tribal areas on Pakistan's
borders in the search for Osama bin Laden?
Or does Bush wish more Arabs and Muslims to share the freedom enjoyed
by the hundreds of "terrorist suspects" held in judicial
limbo at Guantánamo for the past two years in gross violation
of the Geneva Convention?
Or does he mean the freedom which the United Nations says is in
store for some 400,000 Palestinians cut off from their farms, factories,
offices, schools and hospitals by Israel's infamous wall, which
Bush has failed to stop and pointedly refuses to condemn?
In the face of obstruction from Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon,
Bush has shamelessly walked away from his "vision" of
two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace and
security. Will Britain's prime minister Tony Blair, who claims to
be "100 per cent committed" to a Palestinian state, remind
Bush of this vision when he visits London next week? Will the two
leaders have the courage publicly to back the Geneva Accord, negotiated
by the Israeli Yossi Beilin and the Palestinian Abed Rabbo, which
offers the only viable way out of the present murderous stalemate?
Instead of reining-in Israel's far-right government in its wilful
destruction of Palestinian society, and thereby regaining some shred
of international respect and authority, the United States has adopted
Israeli tactics in the conduct of its war in Iraq: the widespread
use of bribed or blackmailed informers, the hooding of prisoners,
the use of torture in interrogations, the bombing raids, the demolition
of houses, the collective punishments. This is the slippery slope
down which the United States is heading.
Paul Bremer, the chief American administrator in Iraq, was summoned
at short notice to Washington this week to discuss with Bush and
his colleagues America's new "get-tough policy" in dealing
with the resistance to its occupation – and, no doubt, to
scratch their heads over how to stem the flood of casualties and
scramble out of the quagmire.
Much of the world shares the fear that Bush's "forward strategy
of freedom" will mean more of the same errors that have brought
the world to its present state of violent disorder: the unilateral
use of American military force outside the constraints of international
law; the obsession with 'terrorism' and, at the same time, a refusal
to consider, let alone address, the real grievances from which terrorism
springs; the intellectually shabby characterisation as 'rogue states'
of countries which refuse to bend the knee to the US or Israel;
the mistrust of international organisations; the dismissal of international
treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol on the environment or the Comprehensive
Nuclear Test Ban, and of such international bodies as the International
Criminal Court; A leading British-based security organisation, Control
Risks, has this week warned that American foreign policy (supported
catastrophically by Tony Blair) has made London a major target for
terrorist attack, and has put at risk American multinational companies
around the world, especially those operating in the Middle East.
Countries such as Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia –
scene this week of a terrible and inexcusable terrorist attack –
are also feeling the heat because of their ties with the United
States. Saudi Arabia is in a particularly delicate and vulnerable
position: vilified by Washington's neo-cons as an alleged abetter
of Islamic terror, it is attacked at the same time by the very terrorists
it is accused of harbouring and financing. Meanwhile, the Italian
government of Prime Minister Berlusconi, which was rash enough to
send troops to Iraq, is this week mourning the death of a dozen
of its soldiers.
A fatal weakness of America's war in Iraq has been Washington's
refusal to acknowledge its true war aims. These have been concealed
in a web of deceit and obfuscation. At the start, the declared aim
of the war was to destroy Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass
destruction which were billed as a threat to the entire world. This
flimsy pretext has now been dropped as no such weapons have been
found. Then, the aim of the war was said to be essentially humanitarian,
to 'liberate' Iraq from a nasty dictator and establish democracy
in that unfortunate country. As Bush declared last week: 'Iraqi
democracy will succeed – and that success will send forth
the news, from Damascus to Tehran – that freedom can be the
future of every nation'. It would have been more honest and more
convincing had Bush said that the aims of the war were twofold:
first, to establish an unchallenged strategic stronghold for the
United States at the heart of the Middle East and astride its oilfields;
and second to protect Israel's regional hegemony (although this
latter war aim probably ranks first for Washington's Likudniks who
occupy key posts in the Administration).
No one appears to have told George W Bush that democracy is not
an article for export. Arabs and Muslims in their great majority
are eager for the material improvements (and gadgets) of Westernisation
but reject a Western, and especially an American, way of life.
Imposition
They do not wish to be colonised by American imperialism nor do
they welcome the imposition of Western Christian, and still less
Jewish, culture on their Islamic societies.
For them, political nationalism as well as pride in their own identity,
and in their Muslim beliefs and practices, are more powerful trends
than the 'democracy' the US is striving to implant. Of course they
want freedom from tyrannical rulers, but the main freedom they seek
is freedom from the United States.
Patrick Seale is an eminent commentator and the author of several
books on Middle East affairs. He can be contacted at: pseale@gulfnews.com
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