Why guerrillas will continue to attack America forever.
By Craig B Hulet?
It is finally admitted by at least one on-the-ground General that America is in a full-on professionally organized guerrilla war; we are not fighting disgruntled homeowners who are angry with the lack of electricity; we are not facing paid foreigners from the wealthy Hussein “loyalists,” nor are we facing classical terrorists of the Al Qaida “ilk.” As this analyst has stated in interviews and articles for over eighteen months, we will be facing an international urban guerrilla war which began on 9/11 on our own soil. Our involvement in the Caspian region, Afghanistan and now Iraq, now possibly Iran, less likely but certainly on the Bush banquet platter, North Korea, will bring more American deaths abroad, a growing guerrilla resistance wherever we have troops on the ground, and further attacks here at home. Here is what one General stated recently:
“I think describing it as guerrilla tactics being employed against us is, you know, a proper thing to describe in strictly military terms...”
Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid, who commands U.S. forces in Iraq, said a “guerrilla war is exactly what U.S. troops are confronting,” not what Mr. Rumsfeld claimed himself on June 30th, that it was not “anything like a guerrilla war or an organized resistance.”
Abizaid said U.S. forces are fighting remnants of Saddam’s Baath Party throughout Iraq. He said mid-level officials of Saddam’s government, including from the old intelligence and security agencies and the Special Republican Guard, “have organized at the regional level in cellular structure.” Abizaid said they “are conducting what I would describe as a classical guerrilla-type campaign against us. It’s low-intensity conflict in our doctrinal terms, but it’s war however you describe it.”
U.S. Military intervention has been identified as the major cause for terrorist acts against Americans and American facilities, corporate, military and governmental by none other than the United States Pentagon’s Defense Science Board:
As part of its global power position, the United States is called upon frequently to respond to international causes and deploy forces around the world. America’s position in the world invited attack simply because of its presence. Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. (Source: 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DoD Responses to Transnational Threats, DSB)
"The level of resistance, I'm not so sure I would characterize it as escalating in terms of number of incidents. But it is getting more organized and it is learning. It is adapting -- it is adapting to our tactics, techniques and procedures. And we've got to adapt to their tactics, techniques and procedures," Abizaid said. (Source: Reuters News Service July 16, 2003) To face this growing threat without alarming the American people the Pentagon will have to send more troops and keep those already there maybe indefinitely.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Pentagon could start a call-up of as many as 10,000 U.S. National Guard soldiers by this winter to bolster forces in Iraq and offset a lack of troops from allies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the U.S. military thin, the report said, and soldiers there still face danger every day. One senior U.S. defense official, asked by the Journal if he had ever seen the Army stretched so thin, said: "Not in my 31 years" of military service.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to sign off later this week on a plan that would set up rotations to relieve Marine and U.S. Army soldiers stationed in Iraq, the newspaper said, citing a Pentagon official. (Source: Report: U.S. May Call National Guard for Iraq Duty, Reuters, July 17, 2003)
Even more desperate has the Pentagon become with this recent story which suggests American corporate mercenaries shall likely be included in the future scenario in Iraq because Americans cannot tolerate deaths of military personnel; but seriously, nobody cares about mercs dying.
With large parts of Iraq still gripped by lawlessness and guerrilla warfare, the Pentagon is planning to hire a private security firm to arm and train thousands of former Iraqi soldiers to guard government buildings, pipelines and other important installations.
The Pentagon has been in talks with the private security firm Kroll to train the former soldiers to take over duties at spots now guarded by US soldiers. The guards would carry small-arms and be responsible for security at up to 2,000 sites. (Source: The Independent.com.UK: Pentagon seeking private security firm to police Iraq By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, 19 July 2003)
"The idea, first and foremost, is to have Iraqis providing security for Iraq at places like the national museum and other fixed sites and there are civilian companies that do that very well," a senior military official told The New York Times. "An added benefit is that it will reduce the load on US troops." Although the US has 150,000 soldiers in Iraq, the Pentagon admits their presence has been stretched thin, the lack of numbers exacerbated by an unexpected level of resistance from Iraqi fighters. Unexpected? That is highly suspect. This guerrilla war was not only expected by the administration they knew it would come, would be planned, and later this too was confirmed:
Allied officials now believe that a document recently found in Iraq detailing an ‘emergency plan’ for looting and sabotage in the wake of an invasion is probably authentic. It was prepared by the Iraqi intelligence service in January and marked ‘top secret.’ It outlined 11 kinds of sabotage, including burning government offices, cutting power and communication lines and attacking water purification plants. What gives the document particular credence is that it appears to match exactly the growing chaos and large number of guerrilla attacks on coalition soldiers, oil facilities and power plants.(Source Washingtonpost.com 6/26/03)
But be assured, it has been admitted it is spreading throughout all of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the Shiite clerics in the South have warned of an extended resistance if America doesn’t leave Iraq now. Two U.S. soldiers were killed near Mosul while 10,000 Shiite Muslims staged anti-American demonstration over the weekend of July 20, 2003:
Iraq’s daily barrage of attacks killed two more American soldiers and an Iraqi employee of a U.N.-affiliated relief agency Sunday, while thousands of followers of a hardline Shiite Muslim cleric staged an anti-American protest in the holy city of Najaf. (Source: PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press Writer Sunday, July 20, 2003 (07-20) 13:17 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP))
Certainly the troops do not want to stay if they are not welcome as liberators (and they are now), but they find only retaliation for speaking out.
Morale is dipping pretty low among U.S. soldiers as they stew in Iraq's broiling heat, get shot at by an increasingly hostile population and get repeated orders to extend their tours of duty. Ask any grunt standing guard on a 115-degree day what he or she thinks of the open-ended Iraq occupation, and you'll get an earful of colorful complaints. But going public isn’t always easy, as soldiers of the Army’s Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division found out after “Good Morning America” aired their complaints. The brigade’s soldiers received word this week from the Pentagon that it was extending their stay, with a vague promise to send them home by September if the security situation allows. They’ve been away from home since September, and this week’s announcement was the third time their mission has been extended. It was bad news for the division’s 12,000 homesick soldiers, who were at the forefront of the force that overthrew Saddam Hussein’s government and moved into Baghdad in early April. On Wednesday morning, when the ABC news show reported from Fallujah, where the division is based, the troops gave the reporters an earful. One soldier said he felt like he'd been “kicked in the guts, slapped in the face.” Another demanded that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quit. The retaliation from Washington was swift.
CAREERS OVER FOR SOME “It was the end of the world,” said one officer Thursday. “It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers.” (Source: July 18, 2003 (SF Chronicle): Fallujah, Iraq Pentagon may punish GIs who spoke out on TV; Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer)
American military doctrine argues that for an attacking force from a foreign land to defeat a guerrilla army they must have a 10-to-1 ratio of troop strength. We lost Vietnam while we maintained that level of deployment. Normally the guerrillas win against conventional forces: Vietnam, Cuba, China under Mao, Laos and Cambodia were both abandoned by the U.S., but the best example of the many is still America itself which defeated a superior military power using precisely guerrilla tactics first used by French partisans against Napoleon. If we just use the figure of , say, 100,000 guerrillas opposed to our occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region in question (which is easily a believable number the longer we stay) it means we would need one million ground troops to fight the resistance. We, of course, do not even have one million ground troops in our military chain of command; we will need to draft the youth to fight this war and the other war, the almost forgotten war on terrorism. And there are several Congressmen who are proposing we do just that.
The map below shows where the main body of guerrilla activity has been taking place. Which, one might suppose is where the main body of newly drafted 18-32 year-olds will be deployed sometime in their future.
Source: DEBKA File map
If steps to deal with the problem in terms of capabilities are limited, can anything be done to address intentions -- the incentives for any foreign power or group to lash out at the United States? There are few answers to this question that do not compromise the fundamental strategic activism and international thrust of U.S. foreign policy over the past half century. That is because the best way to keep people from believing that the United States is responsible for their problems is to avoid involvement in their conflicts. (Source: Richard K. Betts: Foreign Affairs Vol. 77 No. 1, Pg. 40)
Is Democracy feasible in Iraq? How are we doing in Afghanistan?
Dead Afghan children and their father
Craig B Hulet?
This analyst argues from a premise that what we are told is going on in foreign and domestic policies is not necessarily what is, in reality, going on. All governments lie. All leaders, at one time or another, must, in their opinion and for politically sensitive reasons they are not willing to demonstrate, lie. It seems rather odd that this needs to be repeated; since the early 1960s we as a people have witnessed each President and too many crooks within each administration, finding themselves caught in some major scandal, some political act which they of necessity kept quiet on, and so they lied and were caught (Since Water-Gate each now has the generic equivalent and are called “Something-Gate”). All governments lie and most get caught at it. We do not have quote Lincoln to know why they get caught.
President Bush continues to claim American troops are liberators, not occupiers. But the only people who can decide this truth is the Iraqi people, not one American can make this distinction; not one journalist or talk-show host can make the claim one way or the other. The prospect for democracy rests with how this issue is seen and understood by the people of Iraq, not Mr. Bush. The prospect for democracy rests with liberty first, as the means to establish democracy. Democracy is a process of developing a relationship between the governed and the governors. There are many democracies; not all of them are free. Without true liberty democracy in a false dream, or worse, an illusion lived under.
President Bush thinks he can establish democracy by appointment, as he has done in Afghanistan; where the fighting goes on, where Harmid Karzai controls nothing of the country and only barely Kabul because US owned DynCorp’s 3,000 mercenaries protect him. Al Qiada has returned along with Usamah bin Laden.
There are many handicaps to establishing democracy in Iraq. First the country must be rebuilt, literally from ashes. This takes enormous sums of money. The Oil for Food efforts under UN sanction certainly cannot do this. Even if the US multinational monopoly oil companies extract the oil, nobody is going to buy it as it stands today and for a very long time. There will be little resources from the sale of oil for some time. Why this a problem was pointed out in a recent discussion group forum of the elite Council on Foreign Relations. One of the participants pointed out this unsavory “Oil” fact:
One example of such a handicap is the question of legal title to anything that you might want to export from Iraq -- oil for instance. Because buyers and shippers will have real issues buying a product to which somebody else might assert legal claim. And this is something that I think people have to be very, very conscious of. Why these are issues of international law, and not really sort of periphery concerns but the fundamental ones. (Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, United Nations, April 23, 2003)
Only makes sense, but Mr. Bush cannot allow the specter to raise its ugly head in our media, so the obedient state-run media of America comply. But the fact remains.
Mr. Bush and the humbled masses in America believe that winning the war “is” ipso facto winning the peace. That this has always and everywhere been unfounded in history is ignored in the main stream media also. The people of Iraq are as capable of democratizing their land as any. Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s argument that those of us who do not believe there will be democracy in Iraq, were asserting that Muslims, or Arabs, or Persians or any Middle Easterners are “incapable” of democracy; this is sophistry. Bush and Rumsfeld sought to denigrate the holders of such views by degrading the argument to that despicable level. That is not why this writer believes democracy will not come to Iraq. And I am in good company here even if the reader of this piece does not know who that company is. I shall name one below who was also a participant in the discussion group cited above:
I think we really have to recognize the extent to which we could do in war what we will not be able to do in the process of reestablishing Iraq as a viable country. And for that process we will need to work with the civilian side of the government, with the UN, and with our European partners in a way that we found unnecessary in the war. (George E. Rupp, President, International Rescue Committee. April 23, 2003)
There you have it: What we can do in war we cannot necessarily accomplish for peace. And the first premise is twofold, 1) the Iraqi people are becoming quite informed as to what we, the United States that is, wants in Iraq: absolute control, a permanent military presence, a puppet regime, and their oil, water and infrastructure under US control. Revenue to accomplish these illiberal destinies shall come from oil revenues. Whose oil? (See above.); and 2) there is no liberty in Iraq and without liberty there can be no true democracy.
Now there can be an illiberal democracy (a euphemism created by academics to describe democracies which are only democracies in name and not in substance), i.e. elections are frauds or deceptions, dissent is censored, civil liberties (traced in history to the US and French revolutionary writings) not guaranteed, true free enterprise eliminated, where government grants monopoly status over the industries and the commodities that matter. (Shoe repair and a local diner remain untouched though less and less competitive as monopolies continue to raze the free enterprise sanctuaries.) To put this in better perspective, one author responsible for coining the phrase stated it this way,
...50 percent do better on political liberties than on civil ones. In other words, half of the “democratizing” countries in the world today are illiberal democracies ...
Around the world, democratically elected regimes are routinely ignoring limits on their power and depriving citizens of basic freedoms. From Peru to the Philippines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon: illiberal democracy. It has been difficult to recognize because for the last century in the West, democracy -- free and fair elections -- has gone hand in hand with constitutional liberalism -- the rule of law and basic human rights. But in the rest of the world, these two concepts are coming apart. Democracy without constitutional liberalism is producing centralized regimes, the erosion of liberty, ethnic competition, conflict, and war. The international community and the United States must end their obsession with balloting and promote the gradual liberalization of societies.
(Rise of illiberal democracy, Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, November/ December 1997)
What little liberty is left here in America is eroding before our eyes under The Patriot Act I and II, under the new electronic surveillance organs enlarging daily around us, the rule of law is eroding rapidly. The US regime is centralized like never before under Homeland Security. The CIA and the Pentagon ready to operate domestically right now. Probable cause is a sad and noble concept, now lost. Conflict here at home, wars abroad. The utter lack of dissent allowed in even the most local of media outlets, TV, Radio and the printed mediums; one is regularly and viciously attacked for questioning the President’s motives; the term treason launched against the most mundane of critics. (Treason being a legal term applicable only to its “actual act” in time of war [declared] becomes a term used by the ignorant to silence someone they cannot possibly understand semantically; i.e. they are verbicidal.) Mobs are organized to confront anti-war protestors in support of “the troops.” Some of us know that 99.9 percent of those that protested the anti-war protestors have never voted, never gave a thought for the troops over the decades (Agent Orange victims, Gulf War illnesses, VFW Hall’s rejection of Vietnam Vets because “they lost the war,” etc.) throughout the past and it remains a lie now.
What many were, and remain really about, is their personal bigotry and hatred of “liberals.” A catchall term those on the far-Right use for anyone they dislike the views of. These folks are lacking any understanding that Jefferson and Paine were classical liberals and America was a liberal free Republic based on liberal democratic ideals. But these same bigots are, in the main, bigots because they do not or cannot read. It is these that make-up the mundane masses which will believe democracy has come to Iraq; the same ones that believe the war is over and we won. So, democracy in Iraq? While it is on decline in America? And it is supposed to be America, which institutionalizes it in Iraq? If they achieve anything in Iraq, and we know they will “call it” democracy even if it “is not,” just as we in America continue to mouth “but we’re free.”
Date: May 01, 2003
By Craig B Hulet?
It is finally admitted by at least one on-the-ground General that America is in a full-on professionally organized guerrilla war; we are not fighting disgruntled homeowners who are angry with the lack of electricity; we are not facing paid foreigners from the wealthy Hussein “loyalists,” nor are we facing classical terrorists of the Al Qaida “ilk.” As this analyst has stated in interviews and articles for over eighteen months, we will be facing an international urban guerrilla war which began on 9/11 on our own soil. Our involvement in the Caspian region, Afghanistan and now Iraq, now possibly Iran, less likely but certainly on the Bush banquet platter, North Korea, will bring more American deaths abroad, a growing guerrilla resistance wherever we have troops on the ground, and further attacks here at home. Here is what one General stated recently:
“I think describing it as guerrilla tactics being employed against us is, you know, a proper thing to describe in strictly military terms...”
Central Command chief Gen. John Abizaid, who commands U.S. forces in Iraq, said a “guerrilla war is exactly what U.S. troops are confronting,” not what Mr. Rumsfeld claimed himself on June 30th, that it was not “anything like a guerrilla war or an organized resistance.”
Abizaid said U.S. forces are fighting remnants of Saddam’s Baath Party throughout Iraq. He said mid-level officials of Saddam’s government, including from the old intelligence and security agencies and the Special Republican Guard, “have organized at the regional level in cellular structure.” Abizaid said they “are conducting what I would describe as a classical guerrilla-type campaign against us. It’s low-intensity conflict in our doctrinal terms, but it’s war however you describe it.”
U.S. Military intervention has been identified as the major cause for terrorist acts against Americans and American facilities, corporate, military and governmental by none other than the United States Pentagon’s Defense Science Board:
As part of its global power position, the United States is called upon frequently to respond to international causes and deploy forces around the world. America’s position in the world invited attack simply because of its presence. Historical data show a strong correlation between U.S. involvement in international situations and increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. (Source: 1997 Summer Study Task Force on DoD Responses to Transnational Threats, DSB)
"The level of resistance, I'm not so sure I would characterize it as escalating in terms of number of incidents. But it is getting more organized and it is learning. It is adapting -- it is adapting to our tactics, techniques and procedures. And we've got to adapt to their tactics, techniques and procedures," Abizaid said. (Source: Reuters News Service July 16, 2003) To face this growing threat without alarming the American people the Pentagon will have to send more troops and keep those already there maybe indefinitely.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Pentagon could start a call-up of as many as 10,000 U.S. National Guard soldiers by this winter to bolster forces in Iraq and offset a lack of troops from allies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. Missions in Iraq and Afghanistan have stretched the U.S. military thin, the report said, and soldiers there still face danger every day. One senior U.S. defense official, asked by the Journal if he had ever seen the Army stretched so thin, said: "Not in my 31 years" of military service.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is expected to sign off later this week on a plan that would set up rotations to relieve Marine and U.S. Army soldiers stationed in Iraq, the newspaper said, citing a Pentagon official. (Source: Report: U.S. May Call National Guard for Iraq Duty, Reuters, July 17, 2003)
Even more desperate has the Pentagon become with this recent story which suggests American corporate mercenaries shall likely be included in the future scenario in Iraq because Americans cannot tolerate deaths of military personnel; but seriously, nobody cares about mercs dying.
With large parts of Iraq still gripped by lawlessness and guerrilla warfare, the Pentagon is planning to hire a private security firm to arm and train thousands of former Iraqi soldiers to guard government buildings, pipelines and other important installations.
The Pentagon has been in talks with the private security firm Kroll to train the former soldiers to take over duties at spots now guarded by US soldiers. The guards would carry small-arms and be responsible for security at up to 2,000 sites. (Source: The Independent.com.UK: Pentagon seeking private security firm to police Iraq By Andrew Buncombe in Washington, 19 July 2003)
"The idea, first and foremost, is to have Iraqis providing security for Iraq at places like the national museum and other fixed sites and there are civilian companies that do that very well," a senior military official told The New York Times. "An added benefit is that it will reduce the load on US troops." Although the US has 150,000 soldiers in Iraq, the Pentagon admits their presence has been stretched thin, the lack of numbers exacerbated by an unexpected level of resistance from Iraqi fighters. Unexpected? That is highly suspect. This guerrilla war was not only expected by the administration they knew it would come, would be planned, and later this too was confirmed:
Allied officials now believe that a document recently found in Iraq detailing an ‘emergency plan’ for looting and sabotage in the wake of an invasion is probably authentic. It was prepared by the Iraqi intelligence service in January and marked ‘top secret.’ It outlined 11 kinds of sabotage, including burning government offices, cutting power and communication lines and attacking water purification plants. What gives the document particular credence is that it appears to match exactly the growing chaos and large number of guerrilla attacks on coalition soldiers, oil facilities and power plants.(Source Washingtonpost.com 6/26/03)
But be assured, it has been admitted it is spreading throughout all of Iraq (and Afghanistan) and the Shiite clerics in the South have warned of an extended resistance if America doesn’t leave Iraq now. Two U.S. soldiers were killed near Mosul while 10,000 Shiite Muslims staged anti-American demonstration over the weekend of July 20, 2003:
Iraq’s daily barrage of attacks killed two more American soldiers and an Iraqi employee of a U.N.-affiliated relief agency Sunday, while thousands of followers of a hardline Shiite Muslim cleric staged an anti-American protest in the holy city of Najaf. (Source: PAUL HAVEN, Associated Press Writer Sunday, July 20, 2003 (07-20) 13:17 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP))
Certainly the troops do not want to stay if they are not welcome as liberators (and they are now), but they find only retaliation for speaking out.
Morale is dipping pretty low among U.S. soldiers as they stew in Iraq's broiling heat, get shot at by an increasingly hostile population and get repeated orders to extend their tours of duty. Ask any grunt standing guard on a 115-degree day what he or she thinks of the open-ended Iraq occupation, and you'll get an earful of colorful complaints. But going public isn’t always easy, as soldiers of the Army’s Second Brigade, Third Infantry Division found out after “Good Morning America” aired their complaints. The brigade’s soldiers received word this week from the Pentagon that it was extending their stay, with a vague promise to send them home by September if the security situation allows. They’ve been away from home since September, and this week’s announcement was the third time their mission has been extended. It was bad news for the division’s 12,000 homesick soldiers, who were at the forefront of the force that overthrew Saddam Hussein’s government and moved into Baghdad in early April. On Wednesday morning, when the ABC news show reported from Fallujah, where the division is based, the troops gave the reporters an earful. One soldier said he felt like he'd been “kicked in the guts, slapped in the face.” Another demanded that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quit. The retaliation from Washington was swift.
CAREERS OVER FOR SOME “It was the end of the world,” said one officer Thursday. “It went all the way up to President Bush and back down again on top of us. At least six of us here will lose our careers.” (Source: July 18, 2003 (SF Chronicle): Fallujah, Iraq Pentagon may punish GIs who spoke out on TV; Robert Collier, Chronicle Staff Writer)
American military doctrine argues that for an attacking force from a foreign land to defeat a guerrilla army they must have a 10-to-1 ratio of troop strength. We lost Vietnam while we maintained that level of deployment. Normally the guerrillas win against conventional forces: Vietnam, Cuba, China under Mao, Laos and Cambodia were both abandoned by the U.S., but the best example of the many is still America itself which defeated a superior military power using precisely guerrilla tactics first used by French partisans against Napoleon. If we just use the figure of , say, 100,000 guerrillas opposed to our occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region in question (which is easily a believable number the longer we stay) it means we would need one million ground troops to fight the resistance. We, of course, do not even have one million ground troops in our military chain of command; we will need to draft the youth to fight this war and the other war, the almost forgotten war on terrorism. And there are several Congressmen who are proposing we do just that.
The map below shows where the main body of guerrilla activity has been taking place. Which, one might suppose is where the main body of newly drafted 18-32 year-olds will be deployed sometime in their future.
Source: DEBKA File map
If steps to deal with the problem in terms of capabilities are limited, can anything be done to address intentions -- the incentives for any foreign power or group to lash out at the United States? There are few answers to this question that do not compromise the fundamental strategic activism and international thrust of U.S. foreign policy over the past half century. That is because the best way to keep people from believing that the United States is responsible for their problems is to avoid involvement in their conflicts. (Source: Richard K. Betts: Foreign Affairs Vol. 77 No. 1, Pg. 40)
Is Democracy feasible in Iraq? How are we doing in Afghanistan?
Dead Afghan children and their father
Craig B Hulet?
This analyst argues from a premise that what we are told is going on in foreign and domestic policies is not necessarily what is, in reality, going on. All governments lie. All leaders, at one time or another, must, in their opinion and for politically sensitive reasons they are not willing to demonstrate, lie. It seems rather odd that this needs to be repeated; since the early 1960s we as a people have witnessed each President and too many crooks within each administration, finding themselves caught in some major scandal, some political act which they of necessity kept quiet on, and so they lied and were caught (Since Water-Gate each now has the generic equivalent and are called “Something-Gate”). All governments lie and most get caught at it. We do not have quote Lincoln to know why they get caught.
President Bush continues to claim American troops are liberators, not occupiers. But the only people who can decide this truth is the Iraqi people, not one American can make this distinction; not one journalist or talk-show host can make the claim one way or the other. The prospect for democracy rests with how this issue is seen and understood by the people of Iraq, not Mr. Bush. The prospect for democracy rests with liberty first, as the means to establish democracy. Democracy is a process of developing a relationship between the governed and the governors. There are many democracies; not all of them are free. Without true liberty democracy in a false dream, or worse, an illusion lived under.
President Bush thinks he can establish democracy by appointment, as he has done in Afghanistan; where the fighting goes on, where Harmid Karzai controls nothing of the country and only barely Kabul because US owned DynCorp’s 3,000 mercenaries protect him. Al Qiada has returned along with Usamah bin Laden.
There are many handicaps to establishing democracy in Iraq. First the country must be rebuilt, literally from ashes. This takes enormous sums of money. The Oil for Food efforts under UN sanction certainly cannot do this. Even if the US multinational monopoly oil companies extract the oil, nobody is going to buy it as it stands today and for a very long time. There will be little resources from the sale of oil for some time. Why this a problem was pointed out in a recent discussion group forum of the elite Council on Foreign Relations. One of the participants pointed out this unsavory “Oil” fact:
One example of such a handicap is the question of legal title to anything that you might want to export from Iraq -- oil for instance. Because buyers and shippers will have real issues buying a product to which somebody else might assert legal claim. And this is something that I think people have to be very, very conscious of. Why these are issues of international law, and not really sort of periphery concerns but the fundamental ones. (Shashi Tharoor, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, United Nations, April 23, 2003)
Only makes sense, but Mr. Bush cannot allow the specter to raise its ugly head in our media, so the obedient state-run media of America comply. But the fact remains.
Mr. Bush and the humbled masses in America believe that winning the war “is” ipso facto winning the peace. That this has always and everywhere been unfounded in history is ignored in the main stream media also. The people of Iraq are as capable of democratizing their land as any. Bush’s and Rumsfeld’s argument that those of us who do not believe there will be democracy in Iraq, were asserting that Muslims, or Arabs, or Persians or any Middle Easterners are “incapable” of democracy; this is sophistry. Bush and Rumsfeld sought to denigrate the holders of such views by degrading the argument to that despicable level. That is not why this writer believes democracy will not come to Iraq. And I am in good company here even if the reader of this piece does not know who that company is. I shall name one below who was also a participant in the discussion group cited above:
I think we really have to recognize the extent to which we could do in war what we will not be able to do in the process of reestablishing Iraq as a viable country. And for that process we will need to work with the civilian side of the government, with the UN, and with our European partners in a way that we found unnecessary in the war. (George E. Rupp, President, International Rescue Committee. April 23, 2003)
There you have it: What we can do in war we cannot necessarily accomplish for peace. And the first premise is twofold, 1) the Iraqi people are becoming quite informed as to what we, the United States that is, wants in Iraq: absolute control, a permanent military presence, a puppet regime, and their oil, water and infrastructure under US control. Revenue to accomplish these illiberal destinies shall come from oil revenues. Whose oil? (See above.); and 2) there is no liberty in Iraq and without liberty there can be no true democracy.
Now there can be an illiberal democracy (a euphemism created by academics to describe democracies which are only democracies in name and not in substance), i.e. elections are frauds or deceptions, dissent is censored, civil liberties (traced in history to the US and French revolutionary writings) not guaranteed, true free enterprise eliminated, where government grants monopoly status over the industries and the commodities that matter. (Shoe repair and a local diner remain untouched though less and less competitive as monopolies continue to raze the free enterprise sanctuaries.) To put this in better perspective, one author responsible for coining the phrase stated it this way,
...50 percent do better on political liberties than on civil ones. In other words, half of the “democratizing” countries in the world today are illiberal democracies ...
Around the world, democratically elected regimes are routinely ignoring limits on their power and depriving citizens of basic freedoms. From Peru to the Philippines, we see the rise of a disturbing phenomenon: illiberal democracy. It has been difficult to recognize because for the last century in the West, democracy -- free and fair elections -- has gone hand in hand with constitutional liberalism -- the rule of law and basic human rights. But in the rest of the world, these two concepts are coming apart. Democracy without constitutional liberalism is producing centralized regimes, the erosion of liberty, ethnic competition, conflict, and war. The international community and the United States must end their obsession with balloting and promote the gradual liberalization of societies.
(Rise of illiberal democracy, Fareed Zakaria, Foreign Affairs, November/ December 1997)
What little liberty is left here in America is eroding before our eyes under The Patriot Act I and II, under the new electronic surveillance organs enlarging daily around us, the rule of law is eroding rapidly. The US regime is centralized like never before under Homeland Security. The CIA and the Pentagon ready to operate domestically right now. Probable cause is a sad and noble concept, now lost. Conflict here at home, wars abroad. The utter lack of dissent allowed in even the most local of media outlets, TV, Radio and the printed mediums; one is regularly and viciously attacked for questioning the President’s motives; the term treason launched against the most mundane of critics. (Treason being a legal term applicable only to its “actual act” in time of war [declared] becomes a term used by the ignorant to silence someone they cannot possibly understand semantically; i.e. they are verbicidal.) Mobs are organized to confront anti-war protestors in support of “the troops.” Some of us know that 99.9 percent of those that protested the anti-war protestors have never voted, never gave a thought for the troops over the decades (Agent Orange victims, Gulf War illnesses, VFW Hall’s rejection of Vietnam Vets because “they lost the war,” etc.) throughout the past and it remains a lie now.
What many were, and remain really about, is their personal bigotry and hatred of “liberals.” A catchall term those on the far-Right use for anyone they dislike the views of. These folks are lacking any understanding that Jefferson and Paine were classical liberals and America was a liberal free Republic based on liberal democratic ideals. But these same bigots are, in the main, bigots because they do not or cannot read. It is these that make-up the mundane masses which will believe democracy has come to Iraq; the same ones that believe the war is over and we won. So, democracy in Iraq? While it is on decline in America? And it is supposed to be America, which institutionalizes it in Iraq? If they achieve anything in Iraq, and we know they will “call it” democracy even if it “is not,” just as we in America continue to mouth “but we’re free.”
Date: May 01, 2003