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CounterPunch
February
25, 2003
Bush's Wars on Democracy
There's Nothing
Patriotic About It
by HARVEY WASSERMAN
George W. Bush says he wants to attack Iraq to
install democracy. But as he explained on December 18, 2002:
"If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier,
just so long as I'm the dictator."
Under Bush the Constitutional guarantees
that have made America a beacon to the world for two centuries
have been shredded in two short years.
In terms of basic legal rights and sanctuary
from government spying, Americans may be less free under George
W. Bush than as British subjects under George III in 1776.
Though the trappings of free speech remain
on the surface of American society, the Homeland Security Act,
Patriot I, Patriot II and other massively repressive legislation,
plus Republican control of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial
branches, plus GOP dominance of the mass media, have laid the
legal and political framework for a totalitarian infrastructure
which, when combined with the capabilities of modern computer
technology, may be unsurpassed.
The Administration has used the terrorist
attack of September 11, 2001, as pretext for this centralization
of power. But most of it was in the works long before September
11 as part of the war on drugs and Bush's modus operandi as the
most secretive and authoritarian president in US history.
So with today's US as a model, what would
be in store for Iraqis should Bush kill hundreds of thousands
of them to replace Saddam Hussein?
President Bush has asserted the right
to execute "suspected terrorists" without trial or
public notice; The Administration claims the right to torture
"suspected terrorists," and by many accounts has already
done so; Attorney-General John Ashcroft has asserted the right
to brand "a terrorist" anyone he wishes without evidence
or public hearing or legal recourse; The Administration has arrested
and held without trial hundreds of "suspected terrorists"
while denying them access to legal counsel or even public notification
that they have been arrested; The Administration has asserted
the right to inspect the records of bookstores and public libraries
to determine what American citizens are reading; The Administration
has asserted the right to break into private homes and tap the
phones of US citizens without warrants; The Administration has
attempted to install a neighbors-spying-on-neighbors network
that would have been the envy of Joe Stalin; The Administration
has effectively negated the Freedom of Information Act and runs
by all accounts the most secretive regime in US history; When
the General Accounting Office, one of the few reliably independent
federal agencies, planned to sue Vice President Dick Cheney to
reveal who he met to formulate the Bush Energy Bill, Bush threatened
to slash GAO funding, and the lawsuit was dropped; After losing
the 2000 election by more than 500,000 popular votes (but winning
a 5-4 majority of the US Supreme Court), the Administration plans
to control all voting through computers operated by just three
companies, with code that can be easily manipulated, as may have
been done in Georgia in 2002, winning seats for a Republican
governor and US senator, and in Nebraska to elect and re-elect
US Senator Chuck Hagel, an owner of the voting machine company
there; FCC Chair Michael Powell (son of Colin) is enforcing the
Administration's demand that regulation be ended so nearly all
mass media can be monopolized by a tiny handful of huge corporations;
Attorney-General Ashcroft has assaulted states rights, a traditional
Republican mainstay, using federal troops to trash public referenda
legalizing medical marijuana in nine states; Ashcroft has overridden
his own federal prosecutors and assaulted local de facto prohibitions
against the death penalty, which has been renounced by every
other industrial nation and is now used only by a handful of
dictatorships, including Iraq.
Overseas, the US record is infamous.
Among those it has put in power are Saddam Hussein, the Taliban
and Manuel Noriega, not to mention Somoza, Pinochet, Marcos,
Mobutu, the Shah, the Greek Junta and too many other murderous
dictators to mention in a single article.
Afghanistan, leveled in the name of democracy
and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, now stands ruined and abandoned.
In sequel, Bush is gathering Iraq attackers with the promise
of cash bribes, oil spoils and conquered land.
Turkey, Bulgaria and Bush's manufactured
Iraqi opposition are already squabbling over the booty. Bush
says rebuilding will be funded by Iraqi oil revenues, probably
administered through the same core regime now in place, but with
a different figurehead.
In other words: the media hype about
bringing democracy to Iraq is just that. There is absolutely
no reason to believe a US military conquest would bring to Iraq
the beloved freedoms George W. Bush is so aggressively destroying
here in America.
A regime that so clearly hates democracy
at home is not about to wage war for one abroad.
Harvey Wasserman is author of "The
Last Energy War: The Battle Over Utility Deregulation"
(Seven Stories Press, 2000).
Copyright (C) 2003 by Harvey Wasserman
Yesterday's
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February 22
/ 23, 2003
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Security Threat?
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