Empire v. Democracy

Main Entry: de·moc·ra·cy
Pronunciation: di-'mä-kr&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form: plural -cies
1 a : government by the people; especially : rule of the majority b : a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections
2 : a political unit that has a democratic government —dem·o·crat·ic /"de-m&-'kra-tik/ adjective —dem·o·crat·i·cal·ly adverb

Democracy is what happens when a large group of people from all walks of life get together in a rational and intelligent matter and decide, amongst themselves, what course of action their society should take. The opposite of democracy is dictatorship; the father of democracy is reason; the child of democracy is progress, and the enemy of democracy is greed.

So what do you call an organization that takes extreme measures to suppress or compromise real democracy all over the world in order to further its own agenda? What do you call a political faction who, after watching their enemies win popular elections all over the world, intervene secretly to undermine the power of those enemies, drive them out of power and place their people under the rule of a "more moderate" faction? What do you call a group of political elites who ignore the wishes of their own people at every opportunity and force the creation of laws and military doctrines in and outside of their own borders that endanger and defame the dignity of those very same voters?

Organizations like this have existed under many names and labels: imperialists, fascists, juntas. Any of these three rightly applies to the Bush Administration, which has by and large proven itself one of the most anti-democratic governments in modern history. It's not hard to understand why either. The Bush Administration is full of people (Cheney et al) who are focused on so called "American global leadership" of the world. In short, it's a Neoconservative ethos that the United States has some sort of divine manifest destiny to dominate the rest of the world. The real obvious problem with that theory is that, frankly, most of the world has no desire to be dominated by the United States or anyone else; they have their own ideas about what's good for their society and their government, about how they want to live and what they want to believe, and their vision of an ideal society is considerably different from the vision of the Bushite Neocons.

That, you see, is where Democracy becomes a problem. You will not find any Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who haven't seen at least one family member arrested, beaten or blown up by the Israeli military. You'll find even fewer of them who have a particularly favorable opinion of the United States Government, whose spokescreatures say things like "Israel has a right to defend itself" or "A peaceful solution is available, but only if the Palestinians renounce violence." It's therefore not particularly hard to imagine why an organization like Hamas, who has a reputation for standing up to Israel and the United States, would be more popular among Palestinians. Add to that notorious corruption by the Fatah Party, plus (in the case of Abu Mazen) close diplomatic ties with--and even support from--Israel and the United states, then really, it shouldn't be at all surprising that Hamas swept the elections in 2006. The United States and Israel may be indifferent to Palestinian complaints; Hamas is not. The West may be in different to the disparity of power, resources and quality of life between the Palestinian territories and Israel; Hamas is not. Condi Rice may be indifferent to the fact that the Israeli military has killed more Palestinians in the last six years than all Palestinian groups combined in the last thirty; Hamas is not. People tend to be less supportive of a government that doesn't give a damn whether they live or die than they are of an organization that is fighting tooth and nail to keep them alive. The Palestinians know--or at least perceive--that their militant "fringe" will stand up for them no matter what Israel or even the Americans do. In short, since it has been American foreign policy for the past forty years to screw over the Palestinians whenever possible, Palestinians are not likely to vote for candidates who suck up to the West.

That's where Elliott Abrams comes in. Under the Reagan Administration, Abrams assembled a truly impressive résumé. During his tenure under Reagan, he helped to whitewash the depravity of Salvadoran Death Squads, who in fact were being funded, armed, trained and directed by the CIA. He denied the existence of the El Mozte Massacre which, it turned out, was a CIA-led operation designed to discredit the "communists." He later solicited money for the Nicaraguan Contras, who were also (illegally) being funded, armed, trained and directed by the CIA. When the State Department demanded Manuel Noriega to step down and create a "democratic government," there was Abrams again demanding a government free of corruption, maybe forgetting that Manuel Noriega had been installed in power by the CIA in the first place.

What would a man like Elliott Abrams do if he was appointed to a powerful and influential position like, say, Deputy National Security Advisor? I suppose, as soon as he realized that a large, well-armed political faction vehemently opposed to "U.S. Interests in the Region" was rapidly gaining popularity among the people, he would funnel huge amounts of money and weapons to U.S.-friendly "moderates" in the Palestinian camp--in this case, Fatah--and spearhead the creation of massive military organizations like the Preventive Security Force and the Presidential Guard. The Preventive Security Force, who just finished getting their asses handed to them in Gaza, are run by Mohammad Dahlan: head of the recently-appointed "Palestinian National Security Council" and has his own private militia trained by British and American "services". Unlike the Iran-Contra thing, these arms shipments to Fatah haven't been exactly secret, and really, neither has their purpose. The State Department's made no secret of the fact that it despises Hamas, that it wants to see Hamas destroyed by any neas neccesary, and that, despite being the democratically elected government of Palestine, it will not under any circumstances recognize its legitimacy unless it plays nice (like Fatah) and rolls over for the Israelis.

America's history of "Global Leadership" is a dismal one. The Contras failed to destroy the Sandinistas, the CIA-trained military death squads in El Salvador were finally destroyed by their moderate and leftist opponents. And as for Noriega, he wound up turning his back on American interests, which is the main reason why Bush Senior invaded Panama. Ngô Ðình Diệm--America's first puppet ruler of Vietnam--was assassinated by a military coup, and ten years later the replacement puppet, Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, was forced to resign just before the Communists took over South Vietnam. Now, apparently, history is repeating itself, and what every minute is looking more and more like America's puppet government in Palestine (under "moderate" President Abu Mazen) is about to get ousted by a popular uprising.

Speaking of Vietnam, it occurs to me all of a sudden that in the 1950s, it was pretty well understood that Ngô Ðình Diệm had about a snowball's chance in hell of beating Hồ Chí Minh in a free democratic election. Instead of reuniting Vietnam under a single leader, elected by the Vietnamese people, the United States kept the country divided into North and South and rigged the election in the south to keep Diệm in power. Twenty years later, the Communists took over the South anyway; what should have taken two months and a national election instead took twenty years and cost over seven million lives.

I could be misunderstanding something, but isn't that the whole reason democracy was invented in the first place? So that all the people in a particular nation can get together and come up with a solution that meets most of their needs? So that, when a particular government is doing things that are dangerous or stupid (or both), the people affected can simply choose a new leader who won't cause such problems? At least we can say that Bush's rhetoric is more or less correct: democracy is the answer to most of the problems in the Middle East and around the world. Unfortunately, the Bushites need to get it through their heads one of these days that Democracy means a hell of a lot more than "a political contest between two or more pro-American candidates on the CIA payroll." If you keep sabotaging genuine democratic movements all over the world, people are going to notice; if the elections don't bring change, then an armed uprising will.