Democracy In Iraq: A Referendum on the Occupation

If we are to believe that the occupation of Iraq is to achieve democracy – and not to secure control of Iraqi oil or to establish a military stronghold in the region – there is a clear and definitive solution to the quagmire that currently engulfs both the occupying forces and the Iraqi people in a rising tide of blood, frustration and despair.

We are now hammering the city of Fallujah into submission with a barrage of bombs, missiles and firepower unseen since the atrocities of the Vietnam era, on the pretense of clearing the way for January elections. Having observed American democracy in action (through whatever sources of free information remain in that forsaken land), the Iraqi people can have no confidence in an American sponsored electoral process. In America, the party in power purged the opposition through fraud, intimidation and disenfranchisement; in Iraq, they are accomplishing the same through the application of deadly force.

If we are sincere about creating democracy in Iraq, the first item on the ballot in January should not be a slate of occupation-approved candidates but the occupation, itself:

Shall all foreign military forces depart from Iraqi soil within six months of Election Day?

This is the demand that will expose the blatant lie of our intentions to impose democracy on Iraq. The current inhabitants of the White House have shown nothing but contempt for democracy at home and in the world at large. In America, not since the election of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 has there been a more determined effort to subvert the democratic process. To those gutless media spokespersons that are heaping praise on the genius of mastermind Karl Rove, if justice finds her way (however unlikely under the current administration), his crowning glory will be a new address in a federal penitentiary.

Around the world, this administration openly supported the attempted military overthrow of elected president Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. In Haiti, it was by American hands that elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was removed from office. In Pakistan, the administration turned its back when its ally in the war on terror, General Pervez Musharaf, effectively abolished all democratic institutions. In Russia, when Vladimir Putin, the president’s odd soul mate, moved to eviscerate what little remained of Russian democracy, the outrage in Washington was nowhere to be found.

In an ironic and cynical twist, with Yasser Arafat’s body only recently interred, our president has demanded democracy in Palestine as a prerequisite to the peace process. He neglected to note that Arafat was elected president of the Palestinian Authority by an overwhelming margin in 1996, yet America refused to engage in the process while Arafat was still in power. The implication was clear: If Palestinian democracy does not produce the result we demand, we will not recognize it. In essence, with Tony Blair by his side, he was already blaming the Palestinians for the failure that will almost certainly follow.

Meantime, in Iraq, we have watched this administration’s rationales for war wiped away by a flood of incontrovertible facts: There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no connection between Saddam Hussein (America’s henchman) and Al Qaeda (America’s freedom fighters in the war against the Soviet empire). The only rationale left that remains within the realm of moral conduct is the claim that we must stay the course to achieve democracy in Iraq. This is the darkest and most shameful claim of all.

It is time to call the administration’s bluff. If we are for democracy, then the sovereign power of Iraq resides in the people. Let the people decide. If we would deny the people the right to determine their own fate, then we can no longer claim to be fighting for democracy.

When we have stripped away all false pretenses and phony rationalizations, one indelible fact becomes clear: There would be no war in Iraq if not for the oil beneath their lands. This is the unadulterated and horrific truth.

This proud and freedom-loving nation has become an instrument of imperial terror dedicated to dominance and control of the world’s most treasured resources. This is the reason our soldiers are dying. This is the reason the Iraqi resistance must be annihilated, crushed and punished beyond the limits of human compassion.

This is also the reason there can be no truce, no peace, no civility in American politics over the next four years of the Bush administration. We cannot submit to the will of our political enemy when so many real lives are in the balance. We cannot pull back and wait for our political wounds to mend when so many are suffering real wounds. We cannot wait another four years for, when we look at the political landscape, we see decades of war at a minimum.

Tom Paine once wrote, on the head of a drum, on a desperate night in the New Jersey wilderness, "These are the times that try men’s souls." May his words reach out to us all in the desperate hours and years ahead, for it becomes our trial and our destiny to stand strong in opposition to war and the gathering threat of an American empire.

Jazz.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES, THE WAR CHRONICLES (CROW DOG PRESS) AND GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION (DRY BONES PRESS). SEE WWW.JACKRANDOM.COM.

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