Democracy and Responsibility
To Whom it May Concern (you know who you are),
I am sick of hearing praises for George W. Bush, and his wonderful crusade to spread democracy through the Middle East. Most recently is the various Bush fans claiming responsibility for Syria leaving Lebanon. The USA certainly had a hand in it, but this is something the Lebanese have been working on for over a decade, the US hardly deserves credit for being the sole precipitator of this change.
Though (so far) Bush's policy has really been truly disastrous in one country (Iraq of course), it looks like he's getting ramped up to invade anyone else who dares oppose him. It's hardly surprising that rogue states are seeking nuclear armament, they are under the very real threat of invasion by a foreign power, and the concept of mutually assured destruction kept the war between the US and the USSR cold for decades. A cold war is certainly prefereable to a hot one.
I'm also sick of seeing "for the camera" images, and romanticized and cleaned up stories appearing on all North American news agencies. The BBC, and CBC are two of the only news agencies left in the world that you can rely on for unbiased news, why? See: corporate conflicts of interest and agendas.
You know, there's something worse than living under a ruthless despot like Hussein - and that's living in chaos with a foreign invader shooting up civilians on a daily basis, and let's face it, for everyone that Hussein would have "disappeared" and tortured for no reason, the using is doing tenfold, so who's really evil here?
Part of the problem is that many Americans (always the loudest ones) have no sense of empathy at all. If your soldiers arrest and torture innocent people, well, that's just the price of war, but if someone tortures a US citizen, it's unbelievably barbaric and evil, and they should be nuked.
Let me ask you a hypothetical question based on real situations - many people in your country hate Bush, as many Iraqis hated Hussein, both are guilty of gestapo tactics, torture, and corruption - don't even bother trying to deny it, Cheney still makes a great deal of money from Halliburton, who strangely get overpriced no bid contracts. It's clearly matter of favours for favours in the Bush government. Anyway, back on point, half of your population hates Bush, so if some foreign power, say, China, decided that your people should be freed from the tyranny of George Bush, and they came to your country, destroyed the infrastructure so that you couldn't get electricity or running water any more than sporadically, even in your biggest cities. If China had bombed government and military buildings, as well as plenty of "collateral damage". Imagine that almost everyone you knew had lost family as a result of this. Imagine that they left your country covered in uranium dust, resulting in outrageous cancer and birth deformity rates. Would you be grateful for being liberated? Would people who hate Bush be grateful? This is the reality that people in Iraq have to live with every day because of the actions that were taken because of your government, who took these actions because they were your wishes, even if they had to lie to you to convince you. What this means is that any citizen of a country that invaded who supported the invasion bears partial responsibility, and cannot be taken seriously in claiming innocence. You, yes you are a murderer and a plunderer, these actions were taken in your name, and responsibility is the price of true democracy.
Maybe you'd have a little more empathy if before you go believing the bullshit from the usual suspects (well, it is cheaper to just parrot what the government tells you instead of having to do any actual journalism and investigation, and corporations that own the news have a legal obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits), you should try listening to what the actual Iraqis have to say.
There's a girl that lives in Baghdad that has one of the best blogs I've seen. There seems to be this impression in the US that people in the Middle East are barbarians, which is simply not the case, life there (when you're not getting invaded) is not tremendously different from life here or in the US, they are real people with real families, real friends, and real lives. She hated Hussein as much or more than any American, but now her life is far worse. She lives in the real fear, because their newly elected government has stated that they will incorporate Islamic law into their constitution. Their interpretation of that law means the beekeeper suits that you so love to talk about when preaching of the freedom you're spreading, or at least a head covering (no hair showing), and an ankle length skirt (no pants), and a wrist length loose top that doesn't show any shape. She used to be free to dress as she pleased in Iraq (which was exactly the same as many fashionable European and American women), and nobody could say anything about it, because for everything that was wrong about Hussein, he kept the government secular, and nobody dared challenge it. This kind of discrimination really is the will of the people in Iraq, this is the common Shia view, and the majority are Shia (remember the voting?), and believe this to be right. Can you really tell me that this is a country ready for true democracy? Where democracy doesn't mean freedom to do and express yourself as you please, but freedom to opress women? Even now, she gets many extremely rude comments about "dressing so disrespectfully", which she would have never put up with under Hussein, but now to argue the point too strongly would place her in real danger. These are the fruits of your invasion and your democracy, and I'll say it again, the fact that your democracy represents your wishes makes you wholly responsible for all of this. I highly recommend that you check out her blog, the url is http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com. Read it and understand what taking actions based on your assumptions of a situation about which you know nothing. Congratulations, freedom and democracy for all.
The world is hardly safer, if al Quaeda had an advertising campaign planned, they probably withdrew it because Bush has done a great job for them, there will be no shortage of people pissed off with the USA after losing their entire families and many friends.
Anyway, I could rant all day about this, and it drives me mad how ignorant so many people (not just Americans) are about the subject, yet still seem to have such a strong opinion on the matter, which in a democracy gets acted on, there's that responsibility thing again. Anyway, despite Bush's refusal to accept liability from an international court, so that soldiers who torture innocent people can be punished instead of just a couple of them scapegoated, and then pretending that the situation was just a few bad apples, and doesn't exist any more. Despite this, Bush and Blair should be held accountable. There should be trials for war crimes, don't try and tell me that torture isn't a war crime, and it's policy, not just a few bad apples. Because yet again this is a subject on which you are no doubt blissfully ignorant, I suggest that you read Amnesty International's letter to George Bush, it's very enlightening - http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR511452004.
I doubt that I'll change anyone's mind with any of this, after all, what true American would accept responsibility for the true consequences of their actions when they can be cowardly and hide behind false patriotism, believing the propagandized and sanitized stories that their governments choose to tell them, but maybe a few people who are so strongly opinionated on the subject, yet know nothing of the real facts and the real effects of this will shut the hell up.