Holonics
Library
Blog
Courses
|
|
Z Magazine Online April 2003 Volume 16 Number 4 Editorial
Iraq: War and Democracy
by
Stephen R. Shalom
I
support regime change. I support it around the world, including in Iraq,
where a dictator holds sway. The question, however, is whether we should
support regime change by the United States military and whether there
is any reason to believe that a U.S. invasion will lead to democracy for
the people of Iraq, let alone for the wider region.
There are
many good reasons to be skeptical that a U.S. military assault will result
in any sort of meaningful democracy. First, one only has to look at who
the supposed agent of this democratic flowering is to be: George W. Bush,
who rules the United States illegitimately, having stolen the 2000 election,
and who presides over the most serious assault on the basic democratic
rights of the people of the United States in over half a century. Second,
one should look at the long record of U.S. foreign policy.
- At the turn of the
last century, during the debate over the annexation of the Philippines,
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge declared, if justice requires the consent
of the governed, “then our whole past record of expansion is a
crime.”
- Woodrow Wilson proclaimed
his devotion to democracy while sponsoring interventions in Haiti, Nicaragua,
and Mexico.
- In 1949, the CIA backed
a military coup that deposed the elected government of Syria.
- In the 1950s, the CIA
overthrew the freely-elected, democratic government of Guatemala and
blocked free elections in Vietnam.
- In the 1960s, the United
States undermined democracy in Brazil and in the Congo (the first scrapping
of a legally recognized democratic system in post-colonial Africa).
- In 1963, the United
States backed a coup by the Ba’ath party in Iraq—Saddam Hussein’s
party —and gave them names of communists to kill.
- In the 1970s, the CIA
helped to snuff out democracy in Chile. As Kissinger told a top-secret
meeting, “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a
country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”
- In 1981, vice-president
George Bush Sr. told Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, “We
love your adherence to democratic principle.”
- Consider Indonesia,
ruled by a dictator, Suharto, who killed more “of his own people”
than did Saddam Hussein (with U.S. arms and, again, with lists of names
of Communists to liquidate). In 1997, the year before the Indonesian
people drove Suharto into exile, Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that “any
balanced judgment of the situation in Indonesia today, including the
very important and sensitive issue of human rights, needs to take account
of the significant progress that Indonesia has already made and needs
to acknowledge that much of this progress has to be credited to the
strong and remarkable leadership of president Suharto.”
- Consider the report
written for Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu in 1996 by a group
of U.S. neoconservatives, many of whom hold prominent positions in the
current Bush war administration (Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David
Wurmser). This report recommended restoring the Hashemite monarchy to
power in Iraq.
There has
been little acknowledgment of just how deep U.S. opposition to democracy
has been. So even a New York Times article by Todd Purdum in March,
admitting that the U.S. has not always been a champion of democracy, says
the following: “The first President Bush protested when a military
coup overthrew the democratically elected leader of Haiti, the Rev. Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, but was far less exercised around the same time when the Algerian
Army canceled the second round of elections that seemed certain to put
an Islamic fundamentalist regime in power.”
Purdum is
right about Algeria, but his account of Haiti is terribly misleading.
In fact, the U.S. had all sorts of ties to the coup plotters in Haiti
and did all it could to sabotage efforts to remove the junta.
There are
other reasons to be skeptical about the democratic impact of this war:
oil contracts, bases, Kurds—plans are being made by the Bush administration
on all these matters, matters that even minimal notions of democracy would
leave to Iraqis. Bush, writes Thomas Powers in the March 18 New York
Times, “will have virtually unlimited power...far greater power,
for example, than Queen Victoria’s over India in the 19th century.”
U.S. officials
say the occupation will last at least two years. Powers notes that the
U.S. troops will remain until U.S.-Iranian differences “are resolved
by diplomacy or war, which ever comes first.”
The claim
that the U.S. wants to bring democracy to the region is preposterous.
Imagine what democracy in the Middle East today would mean. Is it conceivable
that a Saudi Arabian government that reflected the views of its people
would be providing bases for Washington’s war? Would a democratic
Egypt allow U.S. forces to transit the Suez canal? Would democratic UAE
or Qatar or Bahrain be aiding the U.S. war effort?
Consider
Turkey: the U.S. was outraged at a parliamentary vote, which was consistent
with the views of 94 percent of population. (The cabinet had earlier been
pressed by Washington into approving a deal before details were even worked
out, hardly a model of democratic practice.) The Turkish military said
it had avoided making a statement before the parliament’s vote because
it knew that would be undemocratic, but after the failed vote it didn’t
refrain from pressing for a reversal, with U.S. backing.
A February
26, 2003 classified State Department report was leaked to the Los Angeles
Times (March 14, 2003). The thrust of the document, according to a
source, was “...this idea that you’re going to transform the
Middle East and fundamentally alter its trajectory is not credible.”
“Even
if some version of democracy took root—an event the report casts
as unlikely—anti-American sentiment is so pervasive that elections
in the short term could lead to the rise of Islamic-controlled governments
hostile to the United States and Electoral democracy, were it to emerge,
could well be subject to exploitation by anti- American elements.”
Bush refers
to his “coalition of the willing” and many analysts have noted
that it is a coalition of the coerced and the bribed. But it’s also
a coalition of the undemocratic. It is a coalition of governments whose
views do not reflect the views of their people—the basic, minimal
definition of demo- cracy.
As Colin
Powell proudly put it: “We need to knock down this idea that nobody
is on our side.” Many nations share our view. “And they do it
in the face of public opposition.” (NYT, March 10, 2003)
Britain,
Spain, Italy: in all these countries overwhelming majorities of the population
are opposed to war. Nor are things any different in the “New Europe.”
In Bulgaria, for example, the one Security Council supporter of the U.S.-UK-Spanish
position, a January poll showed 59 percent of the population opposed to
war in any circumstances and another 28 percent opposed to war without
Security Council backing, with only 5 percent favoring a unilateral war
by the United States and its allies.
The only
country in the world where a majority of the population supports war is
Israel and this is the one country that is not officially part of the
coalition of the willing (for fear it will drive some of the willing into
becoming unwilling).
In the United
States, there is no decisive voice for war. While the latest polls seem
to show majority support for war, the same polls show that 60 percent
believe the U.S. should take into account the views of its allies, more
want the U.S. to take account of any UN veto than don’t, and 52 percent
want the inspectors to be given more time (CBS/NYT poll, March 7-9). A
USA Today poll the weekend of March 15 says that 50 percent
oppose war if there is no UN resolution.
The CBS/NYT
poll also shows that 62 percent think the Bush administration is not telling
the public important information it needs to know, but a plurality believe,
contrary to any evidence, that Saddam Hussein was personally involved
in the September 11 terrorist attacks. This poll data suggests considerable
confusion, which is not surprising, given the government lies, forgeries,
plagiarism, and press self-censorship. (Would public opinion be different
if the U.S. press had given prominent attention to the U.S. spying on
the UN or the suppressed testimony of the Iraqi defector?) Democratic
backing doesn’t automatically make a war right, but this will surely
be one of the most undemocratic wars ever waged.
Some have
argued that U.S. policy has yielded democracy before, specifically in
the case of Japan following World War II. The analogy, however, is unconvincing.
First, U.S.
policy makers maintained the emperor in power, planning to use his authority
to enhance their own control over Japan and to make sure that they determined
the pace and extent of change. This meant that criticisms of the emperor
had to be suppressed. Thus, a left- wing film critical of the emperor
was banned by American officials in 1946. Anything negative about the
emperor was kept out of the Tokyo war crimes trial.
In the first
few years of the occupation, some genuine democratic reforms were introduced
in Japan: there was land reform, unions were promoted, the new constitution
included a “no war” pledge, some right-wing militarists were
purged, and some of the zaibatsu, the corporate behemoths of the Japanese
economy, were broken up. But these reforms were carried out by New Dealers,
the most liberal U.S. government in history, while in Iraq we can look
forward to rule by the most reactionary U.S. regime in more than 70 years.
By 1948, as
Washington came to realize that China was not going to become an anti-communist
bastion and that a powerful alternative was needed, U.S. occupation policy
in Japan underwent a “reverse course.” Japanese economic power
would now be rebuilt as part of an anti-Soviet alliance and many of the
early reforms were weakened or repealed. War criminals were released.
A threatened general strike was banned in 1947 and over the next three
years imposed laws severely weakening the labor movement. In 1949, there
was a mass purge of Communists, using regulations originally designed
for ultra- right militarists.
Japan’s
dominant conservative politicians were allowed to maintain their grip
on power by the U.S. Occupation authorities and were secretly bankrolled
by the CIA through the 1960s.
The U.S.
occupation lasted seven years (and two decades longer for Okinawa), but
before it ended U.S. officials took two more steps to consolidate Japan
as Washington’s key ally against communism in Asia. First, the U.S.
obtained military bases in Japan, which they maintain to this day. Second,
they got Tokyo to agree that it would not trade with the Chinese mainland.
For the latter to be feasible, U.S. policy makers determined that Japan
would need to seek what State Department planner George Kennan called
“an empire to the south.” U.S. government officials frankly
spoke of sponsoring a new “Co- Prosperity Sphere.” This meant
U.S. subversion, counterinsurgency, and massive attack to keep Southeast
Asia in Washington’s global economic system. Thus, the war purportedly
fought to defeat aggression and militarism in Asia led to U.S. policies
of aggression and militarism in Asia.
One final
indication of the U.S. view of democracy is its attitude toward the UN:
the organization must follow U.S. orders or Washington will do what it
wants anyway; that the U.S. has the right to openly bribe other nations
to secure their votes; that Washington alone has the right to interpret
UN resolutions; and so on.
New York
Times columnist Thomas Friedman says that he favors war despite the
odds that things will turn out horribly because he thinks it’s worth
the long-shot chance for democracy. So even if the likelihood of democracy
emerging is small, isn’t that better than nothing? Shouldn’t
we take the chance, even if there weren’t many tremendous costs of
going to war, such as:
- It will destroy the
fragile institutions of international law built up over the last few
decades. (Already Turkey is saying that if the U.S. can intervene in
Iraq to preventively protect its national security, why can’t Ankara?)
- It will increase recruiting
for Al Qaeda, as reported in a recent New York Times
- It will increase,
rather than decrease, the spread of weapons of mass destruction
- It places immense
numbers of Iraqi civilians at risk
There are
many grim predictions about civilian casualties from NGOs and internal
UN documents. Fred Kaplan on Slate is right that these are just
guesses, with no solid proof. But the rosy predictions of the Bush administration
are no less guesses and there are reasons to be concerned
Consider
that a report in the London Independent, February 2, 2003, stated,
“The Ministry of Defence yesterday admitted the electricity system
that powers water and sanitation for the Iraqi people could be a military
target, despite warnings that its destruction would cause a humanitarian
tragedy.”
U.S. war
games were reported (NYT, October 22, 2002) to involve 10 percent
casualties among the attacking force in urban warfare in Baghdad. Can
one imagine how many civilians the U.S. will put at risk to minimize the
dangers to its own forces?
Bush has
warned that Saddam Hussein has been interspersing troops and military
targets among the civilian population and that any harm would be Saddam’s
fault. But if Bush intends to liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam, then
presumably he views them as hostages, and who would want hostages liberated
by U.S. cruise missiles and MOAB munitions?
So even
if we were sure that war would bring democracy to Iraq, the costs would
be too high. But of course, we are not at all sure. While one doesn’t
know what the future will bring, whether the U.S. will install some sort
of democratic facade or keep General Tommy Franks as the local proconsul,
one thing is clear: there won’t be real democracy for the people
of Iraq.
Stephen
R. Shalom teaches political science at William Patterson University in New
Jersey. He is the author of numerous articles and books, most recently Which
Side Are You On? (Longman), a political science text book.
Back
to top.
Contact
Legalese Site
Map |
|
know
thyself
- Socrates
|
