Oh dear, Iraq does not seem to be ready for democracy - when the occupying force does not like what the democratic government of Iraq intends to do (see the news below).
Well, Bush will teach them a lesson in democracy, and in the meantime he'll bomb Iran to prepare a democratic future for the very country that lost democracy in 1953 at the instigation of the USA.
Too bad, Iraq wants peace and friendly relationships with Iran and other neighbours. Pretty immature stance, this. After all, Iran is going to have nuclear weapons, in five years time, or maybe never, even if left alone. But the mere possibility of Iran possessing nuclear weapons is a cogent reason to attack it, isn't it?
Funny, the Americans ignore nuclear Pakistan, a haven of terrorists (as defined by the US administration). Maybe Iran should have acquired nuclear weapons, to be safe from a little visitation from the US military.
By contrast, America enjoys a mature democracy. Not one of the frontrunning presidential candidates, Democratic and Republican, has expressed opposition to or voted against recent legislation empowering Bush to go ahead with his aggression against Iran as he sees fit (see the excerpt below the news). The exception, of course, is Ron Paul.
"Iraq’s vice president said on Saturday that his country will not be used as a base to launch attacks against Iran or Syria. Adel Abdul-Mahdi said he discussed security and other regional issues with Syrian President Bashar Assad during their meeting on Saturday. In response to a reporter’s question about a possible US military strike against Iran, the Iraqi vice president said: Iraq does not accept that its territory be used for any aggression against any neighbouring country.’ Iraq has an (Arab) identity which it is keen on and will defend,’ he told reporters at the Damascus Airport at the end of a three-day visit to Syria. Abdul-Mahdi said he discussed security issues with Assad adding that Assad stressed Syria’s support for the political process in Iraq. He said Syria had an important role to play in the political process of Iraq due to its weight’ in the Arab world." -International News
| No Hope in the Democrats Democrats signal capitulation on Iraq – and Iran |
| by Justin Raimondo |
| As the cool undercurrents of Indian summer hint at winter frosts to come, the rhetoric of the Democrats at their most recent presidential debate foreshadows their capitulation to the War Party on the two vital issues of the day: Iraq and Iran. The first fifteen minutes of the debate were devoted entirely to these issues, and, to anyone who wants to find hope in the prospect of a Democrat in the White House, watching the performance of the Seven Dwarves & Gravel (I'll resist the temptation to dub him the Troll) was a depressing experience. "Will you pledge that by January 2013, the end of your first term more than five years from now, there will be no U.S. troops in Iraq?" – moderator Tim Russert's question was posed to one and all, and the Clinton-Obama-Edwards axis of frontrunners all refused to take the pledge, albeit each in their own way. Obama: "I think it's hard to project four years from now, and I think it would be irresponsible. We don't know what contingency will be out there. Hillary: "I agree with Barack. It is very difficult to know what we're going to be inheriting." Edwards: "I cannot make that commitment." If your illusions in the Democrats as the "peace party" aren't shattered, then your capacity for self-delusion is limitless. We're going to be in Iraq for at least through the first term of the next President, and likely far beyond that – and it doesn't matter what the voters voted for, or think they voted for. That's American "democracy" for you, a system that George W. Bush wants to export at gunpoint to the rest of the world. No wonder the rest of the world is saying "No thanks." It was Gravel who raised the real issue coming to the fore in this campaign, and that is the looming confrontation with Iran: "There was a vote in the Senate today – Joe Lieberman, who authored the Iraq resolution, has offered another resolution, and it's essentially a fig leaf to let George Bush go to war with Iran. And I want to congratulate Biden for voting against it, Dodd for voting against, and I'm ashamed of you, Hillary, for voting for it. You're not going to get another shot at this, because what's happened if this war ensues – we invade and they're looking for an excuse to do it. "And Obama was not even there to vote." How that last barb must have stung the self-righteous Obama, whose self-backslapping – "I was against this war [in Iraq] from the beginning" – was an embarrassment. Hillary's sinister laugh, when given the opportunity by Russert to answer Gravel, ought to have curdled the blood of even the hardest of the antiwar movement's hardcore Democratic partisans. What followed was a pretty faithful recitation of the War Party's talking points regarding Iran and the resolution passed by the Senate: "My understanding of the revolutionary guard in Iran is that it is promoting terrorism. It is manufacturing weapons that are used against our troops in Iraq. It is certainly the main agent of support for Hezbollah, Hamas and others, and in what we voted for today, we will have an opportunity to designate it as a terrorist organization, which gives us the options to be able to impose sanctions on the primary leaders to try to begin to put some teeth into all this talk about dealing with Iran." The resolution [.pdf], sponsored by Senators Joe Lieberman and Jon Kyle, designates the Quds force, as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are known, as an official "terrorist" organization. Besides placing sanctions on individual Iranian officials, as Hillary points out, it would also give the President extraordinary leeway in going after the Quds guards militarily – giving him, in effect, the power to unilaterally go to war with Iran, without coming to Congress for any further authorization. There would doubtless be howls of outrage from some Democrats, and even a few Republicans, but the administration would justify its actions – and quite credibly – on the grounds that the authority to go after "terrorists" had already been granted. Of the Democratic "majors," only Edwards seems to realize the import of this. That Senator Gravel, alone, had the courage to raise the alarm, and confront Hillary on this issue, speaks volumes about the state of the Democratic party – and the political impotence of the antiwar majority in this country. Those who want us out of Iraq, and, furthermore, are bitterly opposed to the prospect of yet another war in that neck of the woods, are the new silent majority. Silent because we don't hear this view reflected in the media – where pro-war commentary and "centrist" of-course-we-can't-withdraw-until-2012 punditry prevails – and also politically impotent: with the Democratic frontrunners basically taking a Bush-lite approach. |
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