Monday, December 12, 2005

BAM! Just Like That!: The "price" of Democracy?

I heard an announcer on the news today, (public radio yet!) who while making mention of Mr. Bush's speech in Philadelphia went on to couch his words about the number of Iraqi lives lost since the "incurrance began". For some reason the words he chose to use were, "...the price the Iraqis have paid for democracy" as the implicit cause and reason for these 30,000 (plus or minus) lost Iraqi civilian lives.

How absurd and twisted are we ever going to let this get?!

I can't for the life of me recall when exactly the people of Iraq put out the invitation for us or anyone to come and invade their country so that they could experience democracy.
Nor do I remember the people of Iraq making any international plea for national salvation through a democracy with an expressed willingness to "pay the price" for it by accepting a military invasion that would demand such a sacrifice with bombing and artillery and the whole "shock and awe" democratic package delivery system, which was dreamed up solely by the current leadership of these United States under less than forthcoming qualifications.

If in fact the Iraqi people had collectively done so and did in fact come to these terms of their own volition, then it would stand to reason that they were already capable of performing in a democratic manner and (without the need of an invasion) already experiencing somewhat of a democracy in action.
But this was hardly the case, which makes this latest seemingly small Orwellian piece of Newspeak almost a blatant paradox to reality that is too glaring to go unnoticed.

The initial push to rush to war by our own country was not about delivering democracy.
Delivering democracy was justification number umpteen when several other reasons and excuses had fallen as flat as a day old, open beer that had been left on a radiator. One by one the list of justifications did not stand up to the light of any and all evidence to keep them floating. 9/11, terrorist connections, nuclear abilities, readiness to strike America? All tried, retried and then retired. And through it all, after months of cajoling the American people and the world, at no time, was it ever announced that we would be staging an invasion and occupation halfway around the world because the people of Iraq requested it of us because they had a thirst and/or hunger for a western democracy to the point that they were willing to pay any price for that democracy!

As things stand, the hybrid democracy Iraq is on the brink of being force fed, is such a long cry from what the people of our own country have made sacrifice for that many of us would hardly consider it democracy at all. Many here and abroad are already calling Iraq's democracy a theocracy, cast from much the same mold of that being exercised in Iran.
And how's that Iran thing working out for everybody, by the way???

If in fact the people of Iraq had asked and were prepared independently to make the sacrifices of paying the price for democracy, by contrast they must surely be facing an extreme case of disappointment.
But they never did that. Now they simply want to do what the occupiers demand of them. And hopefully, now after 30,000 of their own are dead these armies will go away again.
On the other hand, the more than 2000 American troops that were taken from our nation in sacrifice to the Gods of democracy seem to be all the more offerings made for something far less than what we all know that intended democracy was meant to be.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Zachariah, inquiring minds want to know: how does your bare face stand the artic winds of the tundra now that you have shaven your face, and why, oh sage of the north, are you looking so clean cut? Get shaggy, dude! jgh