Iraq free to choose government of U.S.' choice
Imagine that I offer you your choice of a donut from a box of a dozen. But each time you go to pick up a donut, I repeat, "But not that one" -- until you pick the one that I want you to have.
You wouldn't feel as though I had given you much of a choice, would you?
Similarly, the Bush regime is now telling the Iraqi people -- whom the U.S. military just "liberated," remember -- what kind of post-Saddam government they should form.
Reports the Associated Press:
The United States expects an eventual government of Iraq to be a democracy where the rights of minorities are guaranteed, not a theocracy run by clerics such as in neighboring Iran, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld says.
"There should be a country that is organized and arranged in a way that the various ethnic groups and religious groups are able to have a voice in their government in some form," Rumsfeld said Monday at a Pentagon news conference. "And we hope (for) a system that will be democratic and have free speech and free press and freedom of religion."
Some demonstrators in Iraq, particularly from the Shiite Muslim majority, have called recently for an Islamic republic similar to Iran, where top Shiite clerics known as ayatollahs have the final say. Rumsfeld said such a government would not be truly democratic.
The Washington Post similarly reported:
The United States would have a hard time accepting an Islamic theocracy in Iraq, even if its leaders are popularly elected, two senators said yesterday.
Appearing on separate Sunday news shows, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) said that whether such a government arises depends, in part, on U.S. officials' commitment to working with Iraqi leaders who view tolerance and freedom as essential to a democracy.
The concern comes as Shiite groups, some backed by Iran, escalate their demands for political control in a new Iraq.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi Muslims took to the streets of Baghdad last week to demand the exit of U.S. and other foreign forces and the establishment of an Islamic state.
I'm not big on theocracy myself (I remain opposed to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, for instance), but I am big on letting the people of Iraq choose their own form of government without U.S. interference. If the majority of them want an Islamic state, they should have an Islamic state. It's their fucking country.
And the United States -- whose "president" won at least half a million fewer votes than his opponent and was selected by a U.S. Supreme Court tilted 5-4 in favor of Republicans -- isn't in any position to lecture any other nation about democracy. (And don't even get me started on how it's those megacorporations that donate the most money to the Republican and Democratic parties that run the country, not the people, and how the Bush regime just subverted the democratic process when it called the United Nations "irrelevant" and skipped out on a U.N. Security Council vote it knew it would lose.)
Of course, what the Bush regime and its supporters, such as Republican wannabe Lieberman, really want, as I've said before, is a puppet government in Iraq that will let the United States tell it what to do, that will let the United States station troops there for its increasing colonization of the Middle East and will allow U.S. megacorporations to suck up Iraq's natural resources and the American taxpayers' dollars in reconstruction contracts.
If our leaders -- who remain disproportionately stupid rich "Christian" white men, the same who call for the fair representation of Iraq's minorities while America's minorities still struggle for fair representation in a plutocracy -- loved democracy so much, we'd have it here in the United States of America.
Update (April 23, 2003): But wait, it gets even better.
The Bush regime is now dictating to the "free" people of Iraq which nations they may and may not associate with.
Reports Reuters:
Caught unaware by the political assertiveness of Iraq's Shi'ite Muslim community, many of whom are friendly to Iran, the United States said on Wednesday it was telling Tehran to stay out of Iraqi politics.
"We've made clear to Iran that we would oppose any outside interference in Iraq's road to democracy," said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. "Infiltration of agents to destabilize the Shi'ite population would clearly fall into that category."
Fleischer said the message had been sent through "well-known channels of communication" with Iran, with which the United States does not have diplomatic relations.
The United States believes Iranian-trained agents have crossed into southern Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein and are working to advance Iranian interests.
But Iran and Iraq have cultural ties dating back to the beginnings of civilization. Interaction between Iran and the Shi'ite south of Iraq has been especially close since Shi'ite Islam became Iran's state religion in the 16th century.
Iraqi and Iranian clerics have moved between the two countries for centuries as teachers and community leaders.
Two issues immediately jump to mind: One, the Bush regime is way, way over its head in this. It appears to be ignorant of basic facts about the globe, facts that are available in any good almanac or encyclopedia. Or, the members of the Bush regime think that they are so omnipotent that they can rearrange the globe as they see fit. (Or both.)
Secondly, who the fuck is the United States to tell any other nation which other nations it may and may not associate with?
And isn't it just a tad hypocritical for the United States to tell Iran not to meddle in Iraq's affairs? Is the United States so morally superior that when another nation does exactly what the United States does, the other nation belongs to an "axis of evil" but the United States is irreproachable?
The rest of the world needs to bitch-slap the out-of-control, Armageddon-bent Bush regime back into reality and humility. And soon, before it's too late.
8:05:14 PM 
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