<The longer we keep this a strictly "US show", the more of a target we makes ourselves as being an colonizer, not a enabler.>
A year from now, you are going to be saying exactly what Bilow is saying today. You will feel betrayed, and you will be very angry. It might take 2 or 3 years. But it's inevitable.
This Administration is run by Control Freaks. They will not allow the tiniest bit of power to slip from their grasp, even in trivial things, even if it furthers their own longterm goals; they will not delegate, they will not compromise. Any Egyptian or Pakistani soldiers will come with conditions, a dilution of American ability to rule by fiat in Iraq. So it won't happen.
If you're a pragmatist, rather than an idealist, great, that means you will eventually realize It Isn't Working, even if the plan sounded great in theory.
What Bremer said, is that he doesn't believe in democracy, he doesn't beleive in the basic principles in the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence. If elections don't come out the way he thinks they should, if the people have been "fooled" into voting for the "wrong" people, because the "wrong" people are better organized, then it's OK to set aside the election results, or not hold elections at all (if you anticipate losing). And the people who decide what is "wrong", are foreign soldiers like him. Every soldier who overthrows an elected government, and institutes a bloody dictatorship, says exactly the same things that Bremer just said. Cancelling elections, is an admission that we would lose those elections.
Democracy means holding elections, and letting the winners govern. That's what was promised, before the war, but it is now clear the promises will not be kept. |
