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More Iraq math, this time from a September 2006 survey of Iraqis conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland:
- Proportion of Iraqis who want U.S. forces to withdraw from Iraq within a year: 71 percent
- Proportion of Iraqis who think the U.S. military presence is provoking more conflict than it is preventing: 78 percent
- Proportion of Iraqis who approve of attacks on U.S. forces: 61 percent
So the next time you're arguing with some poor soul who still supports the American occupation of Iraq, try this little exercise
in deductive logic:
If democracy, as espoused by Americans, is governance that carries out the wishes of the majority of the population,
and
If the majority of Iraqis want American troops out of their country within a year, believe that Americans are doing Iraq more
harm than good, and support attacks on American forces,
then
How is it an exercise in "democracy" to force a continued American occupation upon the people of Iraq?
Squirm as he might, no apologist for this war can extract himself from this seamless logical box, which is why the question
of why we continue to defy the wishes of the Iraqi citizenry is so seldom put to American political elites by the polite media
who interview them.
The answer to the dreaded question is, of course, that the American occupation is an anti-democratic project. It
goes against most Iraqis' expressed desires and it works against their stated interests, which makes it a classically anti-democratic,
in fact an authoritarian, enterprise. The only remaining question is whether this is due to blind American stubbornness or
deliberate design.
So we are left with two possibilities:
A.) American policymakers would like to see some kind of representative democracy in Iraq -- no doubt as part of increasing
American power in the region -- but they foolishly believe that they know better than the Iraqi citizenry how to bring this
about. The desire of most Iraqis for Americans to get the hell out is therefore perceived in Washington as a meaningless irritant
that can be ignored. In addition to being imperially arrogant, this American attitude also reeks of colonial racism: it perpetuates
the Western-centric notion that a brown-skinned people need to be subjugated, against their own less civilized inclinations,
in order to improve their society.
B.) American policymakers are hungry to secure greater control over Iraq's oil, its economy, and its government, and in this
effort American calls for Iraqi "democracy" have provided a usefully distractive slogan for deposing Saddam. An Iraqi government
can then be installed -- another dictatorship is okay if necessary -- that allows for more American investment and profit,
more American political influence, greater American military presence, and increased American control over oil supplies. To
be sure, the hubris of W's crew has rendered this entire campaign a military and humanitarian disaster. But we're talking
here about intent, not efficacy.
So pick one: W and Company are too dumb and too racist to understand how to deal with Iraq, or they are too greedy to care
about what happens to Iraqis in the process of pursuing greater American wealth and control.
Or maybe it's both.
But it's sure not democracy.
(Posted 1/3/07 by Bruce A. Jacobs)
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