|
|
|
|
Hypocrisy Speaks Louder than Words
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Kristina Gronquist, W A M M
|
President Bush’s speech on November 6, 2003, challenged Iran, Syria, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to begin embracing democratic practices and to view the disappearance of Saddam as “a watershed event in the global democratic tradition.” Bush argued that through the military occupation, Iraq will become a beacon of freedom and liberty to other Arab countries in the region. Sounds fishy to me. How can the example of occupation, well known and hated by Arabs, be construed as a productive strategy that will spread democracy throughout the Middle East? And why wasn’t Pakistan included in his short list of nations that need to undergo a democracy spin wash?
If our goals genuinely are to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, a key question is why we ever supported Saddam and why we currently support a dictator like Musharraf in Pakistan. The two policies—deposing Saddam while funding Musharraf—directly contradict each other. Perhaps, in 2013, we might be invading—excuse me, “liberating”—Pakistan to bring down that authoritarian regime and former ally.
Few Americans spoke out against Saddam when their tax dollars were supporting him and buying his weapons of mass destruction. It is this hypocritical reality that pulls the rug out from under all the arguments defending the war on the basis of concern for the people of the Middle East. In her book A Problem From Hell, Samantha Powers reports that there was not a whisper of protest by the State Department or Congress as Saddam used chemical weapons approximately 195 times between 1983 and 1988, killing or wounding, according to Iran, some 50,000 people, many of them civilians.
|
|
Janet Dahlem assists a participant at WAMM’s “Reading for Peace Club” at North Regional Library. Janet is a long-time WAMM member and serves as liaison to WAMM’s Intercultural Action for Peace project on behalf of the College of St. Catherine Diversity and Democracy Initiative.
– Photo by Paulette Sankofa |
|
It is this uneven support for democracy and human rights that makes a mockery out of our foreign policies, and it is this two-sided face of America that people outside our borders deeply resent. The strategy of playing off these leaders against each other is a cynical one and has absolutely nothing to do with bringing democracy uniformly to the entire region. If that were the goal, out of principle, Saddam would never have been our ally and Musharraf would not be one now.
The attack on Iraq was a distraction from any intelligent policy confronting Al-Qaida. We cannot “fight terrorism” by occupying Muslim countries, denying the root causes of terrorism, and ignoring the numerous reasons that our foreign policies have failed and backfired. We are hated for very specific reasons having to do with our government’s actions in the Middle East over a period of many years. Key to this, for the Arab world, is our indifference toward the untenable occupation of Palestine as well as current support for despots like Musharraf.
In ignoring U.S. support for despots like Musharraf, Bush pursues a strategy that obstructs democracy and results in continual blowback. This administration does not care a whit for democratic principles—they sold us a war on fabricated intelligence, protected oil wells while the rest of Baghdad was looted, and have imposed sweeping economic changes on Iraq without even a vestige of consultation. These policies represent many things, but democracy is not one of them.
Outside the U.S., most understand that Bush’s speech was geared toward domestic audiences, trying to put a war sold on deceit in a principled framework. For those of us here who also see through the rhetorical fog, reclaiming the high ground will be tough. But it lies in our willingness to oppose the futility of war, military occupations, and terror in all its forms. Many thousands of civilians—men, women, and children—in Afghanistan and Iraq have died as a result of coalition operations. We cannot, as a nation, proclaim to oppose the concept of terrorism while practicing it. The example we should be providing to the world is the opposite: The U.S. should demonstrate how a nation can disengage itself from cycles of violence and work constructively within lawful norms of the international community. |
|
|
|
Co$t of War
Taxpayers in Minnesota will pay $424.3 million for nuclear weapons in FY2004. For the same amount of money, the following could have been provided:
63,664 housing vouchers or
53,590 people receiving health care or
7,534 elementary school teachers or
1,886 firetrucks or
61,111 Head Start places for children or
169,681 children receiving health care
—National Priorities Project
|
|
|
|
© 2003 Women Against Military Madness. All rights reserved.
|
 |
|
Complete December 2003 - January 2004 Index - click here
|
|
 |
|
|
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
|
|
|
|
|
|
