This week’s real story on the Iraq catastrophe has been widely overlooked by Republicans and Democrats alike. Even those wishy-washy Democrats who support continued occupation (while acknowledging that the war was founded on lies) insist on saying things like: “maybe it will have been for the good anyway, if it helps the cause of democracy in the Middle East.”
Now for this week’s news flash from Bahrain: It doesn’t. Even unnamed “American officials” have acknowledged that, rather than helping, the war has dramatically set back the cause of Middle Eastern democratization. The last rationale for this tragedy has been proven false by the travesty in Bahrain.
To their credit, State Department officials had a good plan: create a foundation to support democratic political movements in Muslim world, with a sister fund to provide venture capital to help build the private sector. The Bush Administration set up a meeting of Muslim nations this week in Manama, Bahrain to kick off the two funds but, as the New York Times reports, the conference “… ended in discord on Saturday after objections by Egypt blocked a final declaration supporting democracy.”
Why a conference? Why not just give the money out directly – maybe through USAID? Because we’re apparently so hated in the Middle East as a result of our actions in Iraq that our aid money can no longer be given directly - or as the Times puts it, we need to “remove the taint of American fingerprints in a region where anti-American sentiments run high.”
“Some delegates,” says the Times, “saw … growing irritation with what some say is the lecturing tone of American calls for democracy. United States involvement in Iraq plays a part in that: the Arab world is not persuaded by the administration’s portrayal of Iraq, which Secretary Rice visited on Friday, as a beacon of democracy.” Well, Karen Hughes ought to be able to fix that!
“Rather,” writes the Times, “Iraq represents the perils of imposing democracy from outside. Its current chaos and violence is widely seen as a cautionary tale rather than an inspiration, American officials acknowledge.” (emphasis mine)
So we’ve seen the deaths of more than 2,000 American heroes and tens of thousands of Iraqis, and the expenditure of hundreds of billions of dollars. The result? The one cause we can all support is being set back, perhaps for decades to come.
Sens. Clinton, Biden, McCain – next justification, please?