Image courtesy of michael_swan under CC BY-ND 2.0.
In the aftermath of crushing harmless pipsqueak Iraq, the most ludicrous idea is that we stay there until democracy is firmly in place. We are going to ensure that the newly freed Iraqi people are allowed to choose their own leadership, not their own form of government but their own figureheads in a democracy we are going to make sure they get.
And this is coming from a republic with an electoral college that has evolved into a two party system where the people are given nothing more than the choice between the lesser of two evils. A system where I last voted for a compassionate conservative who was supposed to have the unique ability to diplomatically bring opposing sides together. What a joke that turned out to be.
Of course, the fact that Iraq was already a republic when we decided to change their regime will be completely ignored and the myth of democracy will be spread across this oil rich land of rival tribes in the best propaganda messages we can muster.
How will candidates for office be chosen? We can’t have anyone from Saddam Hussein’s old Baath party because they’ve all been neatly numbered as criminals with a price on their heads. So where do we find the new candidates?
Will the same background people that picked George W. Bush as heir apparent also pick at least two candidates to run for president of Iraq? How will they do it? Will they pick candidates on some sort of test of their loyalty to the United States? Will they pick candidates they know from the days when we were selling weapons of mass destruction to Iraq? Donald Rumsfeld must have a long list of these friendlies.
Will we send hordes of researchers or train locals to conduct focused group sessions with samples of Iraqis in order to develop campaign promises that can later be ignored? Will we promise the Iraqis profits from their oil after the U.S. sets prices? Will Dick Cheney’s secret energy group be allowed to set up utilities and utility prices for the Iraqis?
Then there’s the media to set up. Television, newspapers, radio talk shows, and all the trappings and paraphernalia of “free speech” to tell the Iraqis about the candidates personalities, love lives, good looks, kindness to children, but most of all to encourage everyone to pick a winner or make sure they are on the winning side as determined by the polls. We will also teach them not to “throw away their vote” by choosing some third party nitwit who collected enough signatures to be included on the ballot but not allowed in the debates and is running on a “Yankee go home” ticket.
Fortunately, we’re dealing with a small nation of only 23 million (fewer after the war) and probably no more than fifteen or sixteen million eligible voters. It shouldn’t take too many computers and polling places to make certain everything runs smoothly and we can always send Jimmy Carter and the Palm Beach people over to make certain nobody votes twice and ballots are counted correctly. How do you say “chad” in Arabic?
But who’s going to pay for all this? There hasn’t been time to set up campaign financing, political action committees, or any of the good old American millions for candidate promotion and sales.
So get your wallets out folks. It’s going to cost us a bundle to create democracy in a country that doesn’t even know what democracy is and wouldn’t want it if they did know.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”