NOW WHAT LIE is shrub going to use as an excuse for the invasion of Iraq?
One U.S. official in Washington said the administration now believes Iraq needs a "negotiated resolution ... a scaled-back democratic process."
Between the two conflicting key goals, "I see the arguments for stability now outweighing the calls for democracy," said the official, who declined to be identified.
Coincidentally, a similar sentiment came from deputy Pentagon secretary Paul Wolfowitz in the New Yorker:
Wolfowitz says that his hopes for a democratic Iraq now are modest. He claims that he never expected a Jeffersonian democracy, as some of his critics have derisively asserted. What he wishes to see is something stable, and more liberal than what came before. “It is something of a test,” he told me one day this summer, regarding the Iraqis. “We can’t be sure they’ll pass. And they’re not going to pass with an A-plus. I mean, if they do Romanian democracy and the country doesn’t break up that’ll be pretty good.”
Which I guess means Wolfowitz was the anonymous Bushite official quoted in this Los Angeles Times article a few weeks ago:
Gone -- at least for now -- is the lofty ideal of Iraq serving as a free-market democratic model that would ignite the forces of change throughout the Middle East and lay the seeds of a settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said administration officials have told him privately that they have lowered their expectations. "They've definitely recalibrated their goals," he said. "One of them told me: 'When we went in there, I thought we would build American-style democracy. Hell, I'd be happy with Romanian-style democracy now.' "
Just so you know, this is the Paul Wolfowitz who was embarassingly referred to as the Bushites' "idealist-in-chief" and shortly after the invasion of Iraq told an interviewer that "democracy is about more than majority rule. . . . Democratic tyranny is not something that we could support."
But, then, what is "Romanian-style democracy," you ask? Well, here's what the Romanian Human Rights Report site has to say:
Since the coming to power of the PSD party in 2000, pressure on central and local media increased significantly, via acts of violence, economic leverage and straight political bullying.
... [American analyst] Peter Gross said that Romania has become a "democratic system without a democracy." He noted that the public opinion is almost gone, that protests that once marked every turn of political events have disappeared.
Just something to keep in mind the next time you hear lies claims about the Bushites' commitment to "promoting democracy" around the world.
needlenose.com
It's a sure bet that the wingnuts prefer "romanian democracy" in America too. |
