by Walter C. Uhler
A member of Iraq's parliament, Khalaf al-Ilyan, was even more
emphatic: "The plan is 100% a failure. It's a complete flop…The
explosion means that instability and lack of security has reached the
Green Zone." [
USA Today,
April 13, 2007] And, as the director of the Security and Terrorism
Studies program at the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, Mustafa
al-Ani, observed, "The claim that the security plan has sent insurgents
scattering into the provinces has proven to be false." [
Christian Science Monitor,
April 13, 2007] Finally, as the Iraq specialist at the Congressional
Research Service, Kenneth Katzman concluded: "If you add it all up, I
don't see how you conclude the surge is working." [
USA Today, April 13, 2007]
Sensing that the Green Zone suicide bomber would once again demolish
yet another of his incessant Pollyannaish sales pitches (e.g., "Mission
Accomplished"), Bush "strongly condemned the act and said it was an
attack against a 'symbol of democracy.'" [
nytimes.com,
April 12, 2007] But, that very same day, Bush's inane assertion about
Iraq's democracy received a sharp rebuke, when "an international panel
charged with recommending invitations for an exclusive meeting of the
world's democracies" excluded Iraq. ["Club Democracy Says Iraq Isn't
Worthy of Invite,"
Washington Post, April 13, 2007]
Although it's bad enough for Bush to misunderstand "symbols" of
democracy, what's worse is his actual manipulation of the American
public, in order to incite them to support his evil war. Such behavior
suggests he seriously misunderstands real democracy. So, too, does his
resort to illegal wiretaps. And so, too, does his refusal to listen to
the people, even after they gave his Iraq policy a new "accountability
moment" in November 2006
In addition, our huckster president failed to mention two inconvenient
facts about the Iraqi Parliament inside the Green Zone: (1) The Green
Zone is widely viewed to be the "symbol" of America's hated occupation
of Iraq and (2) the Iraqi Parliament probably wouldn't last one day
without its protection. As Wayne White (Middle East Institute) has
observed: "The legislature is dominated by 'militia-connected
parliamentarians, does not include enough Sunnis, and beyond that isn't
broadly reflective of even the Shiite community.'" [
Los Angeles Times ]
Zbigniew Brzezinski was blunter still: "A lot of guys in the Green Zone
- not all, but a lot of them - will pack their bags and leave when we
leave." [
Christian Science Monitor, April 13, 2007]
Moreover, beyond repeatedly demonstrating a profound, probably willful,
ignorance about what constitutes genuine democracy, Bush hasn't a clue
about how democracies emerge or deteriorate. But, then, Bush has
allowed himself to be tutored about democracy by America's neocons,
whose uncritical and enthusiastic support for Israel appears to
motivate their superficial and grossly optimistic assessments about the
prospects for bringing democracy to Iraq -even at the point of a gun.
Prior to the neocon con about the ease with which democracy could
blossom in the Middle East, other scholars had emphasized the unique
conditions that had permitted democracy to grow and flourish in Europe
and the United States. Brian Downing, for example, had concluded:
"Unique characteristics such as elective representative assemblies,
royal subordination to law, the independence of towns, a balance of
power between kings, nobles, and clerics, peasant property rights, and
decentralized military forces, 'provided Europe with a predisposition
toward democratic political institutions, a predisposition that can
never be repeated in the modern developing world.'" [Quoted from Walter
C. Uhler at http://www.walter-c-uhler.com/Reviews/War%20causes.html ]
Additionally, a new book by the eminent scholar, Charles Tilly, renders
the manure flung by Bush and the neocons (about democracy) even more
odoriferous. Briefly, Professor Tilly concludes: "The fundamental
processes promoting democratization in all times and places…consists of
increasing integration of trust networks into public politics,
increasing insulation of public politics from categorical inequality,
and decreasing autonomy of major power centers from public politics."
[Charles Tilly,
Democracy, p. 23]
Significantly, Tilly emphasizes the damage that civil war can inflict
upon the democratization process. "Civil war brings a shock to any
regime and generally reverses all three of the master democratizing
processes; it breaks ties between public politics and trust networks,
writes categorical inequalities into public politics, and establishes
dangerously autonomous centers of coercive power." [p. 179] Thus, as
Iraq descends further into civil war, pronouncements by Bush and the
neocons about a democratic Iraq become just so much more manure.
"Manure" also accurately describes Bush's pathetic description of the
Green Zone's suicide bomber. "There is a type of person that would walk
in that building and kill innocent life and that is the same type of
person that is willing to come and kill innocent Americans." [
New York Times,
April 13, 2007] Oh yeah? Simply imagine the number of patriotic
Americans, who might give their life, in order to expel foreign
occupiers from their towns and cities.
Finally, consider how
hypocritical and morally depraved a person must be to criticize someone
else for killing "innocent life," after having launched an illegal,
immoral war of aggression that has taken the lives of some 3,300
American soldiers and, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi
lives?
Your stupidity and incompetence, Mr. Bush, are becoming the stuff of
legend. Like Willy Loman's, your sales pitches no longer persuade and
are now viewed to be acts of desperation. And, as a self-proclaimed
"born again" Christian, who supposedly receives guidance from God; you
possess all the "moral clarity" of a guttersnipe.
Granted, you've yet to be removed from office, so attention must still
be paid. But, mainly to record your crimes for posterity and more
definitively demonstrate that you and your irredeemable Vice President
were always lying, warmongering frauds.
Walter C. Uhler
is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has been
published in numerous publications, including The Nation, the Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, the Journal of Military History, the Moscow
Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also is President of the
Russian-American International Studies Association (RAISA).
Writings 
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