Who Your Friends Are,Says a Lot About You

Who Your Friends Are,Says a Lot About You
By David Glenn Cox

President Bush said “a fledgling democratic movement that he sees spreading through the Middle East is essential to defeating terrorism, and warned Syria and Iran against thwarting the "momentum of freedom" and fomenting instability in the region.

"The chances of democratic progress in the broader Middle East have seemed frozen in place for decades," Bush said at the National Defense University at Fort McNair. "Yet, at last, clearly and suddenly, the thaw has begun."

File Bush’s remarks under even a broken clock is right twice a day, indeed the thaw has begun. But the problem is which side of the thaw is the United States on? The President seeks to promote freedom and democracy but look who his friends are? Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Abu Dhabi and the United Arab Emirates, not a democracy in the bunch.

Odd thing, the President has this habit of only hearing what he wants to hear, never to let the facts get in the way of good propaganda. According to the CIA fact book, The Syrian constitution provides for a republican form of government in what it calls "a democratic, popular, socialist, and sovereign state."

The president is elected for a seven-year term by universal suffrage. A candidate to the office must be a Syrian Arab Muslim, at least forty years of age, proposed by the Baath Party, and nominated by the People’s Council. The nominee is submitted to a national referendum. To be elected, the candidate must receive an absolute majority of votes cast.

While still being far from being like our system the leaders are elected into office rather than born into office. I wonder what the CIA has to say about Iran? The Iranian Constitution stipulates that the president is "the holder of the highest official power next to the office of faqih." In effect, the president is the head of state of the Islamic Republic. Articles 113 to 132 of the Constitution pertain to the qualifications, powers, and responsibilities of the president. The president is elected for a four- year term on the basis of an absolute majority vote of the national electorate and may be reelected for one additional term. The president must be a Shia Muslim and a man "of political and religious distinction." He is empowered to choose the prime minister, approve the nominations of ministers, sign laws into force, and veto decrees issued by the Council of Ministers, or cabinet.

Hmmm, the President is elected to a four year term. So why then is President Ahmadinejad referred to as a dangerous dictator? While the Saudis and the Emir of Kuwait are our good and faithful friends.

What about our client state, Afghanistan? Or more formally, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Shouldn’t that be the Democratic Islamic Republic? I mean this is about bringing democracy right? Well if you think they torture at Gitmo read this tortured definition from the CIA fact book,

According to the new constitution, no law should be "contrary to Islam"; the state is obliged to create a prosperous and progressive society based on social justice, protection of human dignity, protection of human rights, realization of democracy, and to ensure national unity and equality among all ethnic groups and tribes; the state shall abide by the UN charter, international treaties, international conventions that Afghanistan signed, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

What word is missing from this declaration? Hint, the word is used in both the descriptions of Syria and Iran. “A realization of democracy?” Sounds more like a promise than a guarantee. But Iraq and Afghanistan are both client states ruled by hand picked Quislings, no matter what the ink on paper says when occupied by thousands of foreign troops. After all Vichy France was an independent state that just made assurances to always cooperate with her friendly benevolent German neighbors.

Then there is Pakistan; a country George Bush calls our most important ally in the war on terror. Headed by a man who led the coup against the last freely elected President, a man that won his first election by a vote of the generals and the number of bullets in his gun. A man who won his last election by replacing Supreme Court judges who might rule against him and declaring martial law. The Bush administration was slow to criticize the imposition of martial law and quick to rejoice at its lifting totally ignoring that it had successfully thwarted democracy.

But what of Israel? Israel is a democracy but Israel is the stone in the wheel. Her stated goal is to create a monotheistic Jewish state and I have no problem with that on an idealistic level. Just as America declared its own manifest destiny, on paper that is all well and good unless you were a Native American. Suddenly they weren’t just living in their homeland they were considered an impediment to national progress and a threat to our sovereignty.

The Palestinians as well are an impediment to the Jewish state by their very existence they are an irritation to Israeli progress. The American government was a democracy in the 19th century only the Native Americans weren’t considered part of it but hostiles to be placated with treaties. To be overwhelmed with numbers then to be pushed and bought off and shuffled out of the way. Just as the West Bank is slowly being overwhelmed with Israeli settlements making a Palestinian state about as real as Oklahoma is the Indian territories.

The Native Americans were divided into renegades and stay at the forts the group that fed it’s self off the white mans larder. The neo-colonial model for generations the good Indians verses the bad Indians. Ironic because it was followed in both North America and on the Indian sub continent. So how could the cowboy American nation ever support the natives. The Palistians are divided into Fatah (stay at the forts) and Hamas (renegades) and when they vote for Fatah correctly we send money but let them vote for Hamas and the water runs dry.

Democracy is very simple but a democracy that does not include everyone is just a platitude, a bow tie on a dog. Just as a peace conference that excludes hositle parties is a show not a conference, a convention of the like minded to discuss what to do with those not invited.

"Yet, at last, clearly and suddenly, the thaw has begun." You know, George really scares me when he says things like that. Because he means it, it’s more of a confession than a pronouncement. From the very beginning the administration has dreamt of remaking the Middle East in their own image, and handled it with their usual thoroughness and expertise and it is performing as expected. Botched, bungled, patched and jerry rigged, the Three Stooges performing The Marriage of Figaro.

But most frighteningly, is that he is absolutely right, the thaw has begun. But not the thaw that brings flowers in spring but the thaw of avalanche and flood tides, of war and pestilence. The thaw that once started cannot be reversed a thaw that no one can foresee where it will end. Buried in the rubble of avalanche will be the pennants of democracy, set back hundreds of years, The survivors will remember for generations that it was the word democracy that started the thaw, just as the word crusade lights a fire in Middle Eastern eyes today.

But on the surface quiet limpid pools gather the air is warm as small rivulets run off the warming mass of ice. Underneath however the structure is corrupted and hollowed out weakening the underpinnings that have held things in place for centuries. Our Captain oh Captain sits in his crow’s nest crowing, All goes well! Then comes the crack in the ice, trumpeting not the beginning but the end.

The "momentum of freedom" indeed!