April 29, 2007

Democracy In Action … Or Not

By Harry T. Cook

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That great exporter of democracy, George W. Bush, has shown the way. He has shown the way to his petroleum friends in Saudi Arabia. He has shown them how Bush-style democracy works.

According to the /New York Times,/ at the urging of the Bush II administration, the first elections in the history of Saudi Arabia were held two years ago for municipal councils in places as well known as Mecca, Jidda and Riyadh.

One typical city government-type issue recently before the burghers of Jidda was a proposal to ensure that a small section of a seafront strand on which a new university is to be built will be left accessible to subsistence fishermen. The proposal was adopted, news reports said, “enthusiastically.”

Trouble is, the enacted proposal will never be made public, and it won’t matter a bit because the 1,001 Saudi princes and their hangers-on are not required to pay so much as a nanosecond of attention to the city councils. Saudi Arabia, far from being a democracy, is a monarchy.

Part of the reason actual democracy languishes in the kingdom is the high price of crude oil, which results in the royal family’s overflowing coffers. An editor at /Forbes Arabia/ said, “The curse of oil money is that it has stopped all reforms. The more money you have, the more arrogant you can become, because you think you can implement anything your way.”

Funny thing. The editor at /Forbes/ could have made virtually the same comment on American democracy as understood by President Bush, Vice-President Cheney and members of their Beltway klavern.

The results of the general election of November 2006 cannot possibly be interpreted as anything other or less than a mandate for the United States to give up the attempt to subjugate Iraq and get our troops off the IED-mined highways and byways of that now ruined nation.

That did not, however, deter Mr. Bush from implementing his “surge,” or, if you want to be more accurate, tamping more of America’s youthful flesh into the cannons of an undeclared, unwinnable and immoral war – a war to rid the world of Saddam Hussein’s nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, a mission that was declared “accomplished” four years ago Tuesday by some guy in a flight suit strutting across the deck of an aircraft carrier turned to leeward so the nearby friendly shore could not be seen in his background. What utter crap.

But, /mirabile dictu/,/ /Congress has passed a bill to require the beginning of troop withdrawal from Iraq by October 1 of this year. True, there was only a 10-vote margin in the House, and the Senate count was 51-46. Nevertheless, the bill reflects the overwhelming desire of what Bush calls “the Amurcan people” to end the losing-est proposition ever (or yet) among U.S. military blunders.

However, just as with the resolution of the Jidda city council, the sense (and commonsense) of Congress’s end-the-war bill has been dismissed by the Defeated-in-Chief as unpatriotic. “V,” in this case, is for veto. The Saudi princes will probably do the same with Jidda’s city council resolution, if they even bother to notice it.

“Democracy” comes from the Greek /demos /(people) and /kratos /(power or strength). It was not for nothing that some of us streamed through the streets in the 1960s shouting “power to the people.” That’s exactly what the term “democracy” means: power and strength wielded by the people.

The United States is a representative democracy, in which “we the people” vouchsafe our government to elected representatives who, in theory, are responsive to the will of the people who elect them and to “the people” as a whole.

It is a truism to observe that some people are more and better represented than others, i.e. those with sufficient resources to fill up campaign coffers. The National Rifle Association will have much more to say about who gets guns and how than the grieving families of the 33 dead in Blacksburg, Va. There is no end in sight to such manipulation of public policy.

But Congress – especially the sluggish Democrats in it – has actually responded in a fairly effective way to the will of the people as expressed last November: 218 representatives in the House and 56 senators voted to end the war.

What next? Congress (the representatives of the people) must resist the bullying already under way as Bush, Cheney and their sycophants shake their heads in public disgust at the Democrats’ alleged defeatism and failure to “support the troops.” The answer to that is written on thousands of bumper stickers: “SUPPORT THE TROOPS: BRING THEM HOME.” Congress must pass no bill to fund the war without the stipulation to withdraw troops sooner rather than later. That is the expressed will of the people.

The United States can best help Iraq by leaving Iraq. We’ve made a hell of a mess of things there, but even our attempts to clean up the place would be suspect. We barged in as only Americans can. Now we must retreat and admit that we have failed, have lost and, /Deo volente/, have learned something in the process.

Democracy. Power to the people. And good luck to the fishermen of Jidda.

 © Copyright 2007, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.

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Shalom! Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.org.au/ (20,000 articles 4000 humor)