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Today's
Stories
December 4, 2003
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
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December
4, 2003
The Fall of Shevardnadze
The
Implications for "Democracy in the Middle East"
By GARY LEUPP
The Republic of Georgia is variously referred
to as a "European" country (wedged between the Black
and Caspian Seas, at the extremity of Europe), or as a "Middle
Eastern" country (given its long history of interactions
with, and conquests by, Persians, Arabs, and Turks, and its large
Muslim and Armenian Orthodox minorities). These geographical
designations are somewhat arbitrary (European Georgia actually
lies east of the Anatolian peninsula, considered the "Asian"
part of Turkey), but let us consider it, for the time being,
a Middle Eastern country.
Bush on the Need for Middle Eastern Democracy
The neocons shaping U.S. Middle East
policy have insisted all along that they want "democracy"
to arrive in the benighted Middle East. That theme, once peripheral
as the administration built a case for war on Iraq based on the
imaginary threat of weapons of mass destruction and baseless
allegations about Saddam-bin Laden ties, has become more and
more central as a justification for the ongoing occupation of
Iraq. Thus President Bush chose the occasion of a speech before
the National Endowment for Democracy on October 4 to echo the
theme of an earlier speech by Condoleeza Rice: Why
shouldn't people in the Middle East (like everybody, everywhere)
have "democracy"?
"And the questions arise,"
Dubya piously intoned: "Are the peoples of the Middle East
somehow beyond the reach of liberty? Are millions of men and
women and children condemned by history or culture to live in
despotism? Are they alone never to know freedom and never even
have a choice in the matter?" Alluding (as did Rice) to
a supposed conspiracy of "observers" who having some
weird inclination to dis Islamic potential for democracy, Bush
elaborated:
"Time after time, observers have
questioned whether this country, or that people, or this group,
are 'ready' for democracy---as if freedom were a prize you win
for meeting our own Western standards of progress. In fact, the
daily work of democracy itself is the path of progress. It teaches
cooperation, the free exchange of ideas, and the peaceful resolution
of differences It should be clear to all that Islam---the faith
of one-fifth of humanity---is consistent with democratic rule
More than half of all the Muslims in the world live in freedom
under democratically constituted governments." (Such as?
You find me Muslim-majority countries with a cumulative population
of 500 million that deserve to be called "democracies"
in which people "live in freedom." Is Indonesia among
them? Pakistan? Egypt? Morocco? Occupied Iraq? What idiosyncratic
definitions are being applied here?)
He went on to speak of "the Middle East" (which, again,
can include the mainly Christian Republic of Georgia) as "lagging"
in "political development." (As though Bush's vision
of "political development" is a universal process fated
for all nations unless they screw up.) There, poverty is "deep"
and "spreading" due to "the failures of political
and economic doctrines." (You have to wonder why the "failed"
secularist dictatorships in the Middle East produced such advances
in education, health care, women's status and industrial growth.)
Bush alluded especially to those who "allied themselves
with the Soviet bloc." He spoke of "torture, oppression,
misery, and ruin." In words that must especially amuse the
inhabitants of those countries, he spoke positively of the rulers
of Morocco, Oman, Kuwait, Yemen, Bahrain, and Qatar. He spoke
approvingly of Saudi Arabia's "first steps towards reform"
and (noting Egypt's peace agreement with Israel), urged Egypt
to "show the way toward democracy in the Middle East."
The Danger of "Hasty
Elections"
Actually, few
in the Middle East were impressed.
They know that when Egyptian President Mubarak tolerates a demonstration
against the U.S. war in Iraq, the U.S. gets angry; when he crushes
the same, he's appreciated as a loyal ally. They know that Pakistan's
Musharraf has been pressured by Washington to (anti-democratically)
prevent anti-U.S. protest marches. (By "democracy,"
Bush doesn't mean the right to oppose his Terror War.) They know
that repressive Egypt is the number two recipient of U.S. aid
(after Israel), and that Islamic fundamentalist absolute monarchies
Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are important U.S. client states. They
know that Turkey, with a multi-party parliamentary system, has
taken fire from U.S. officials precisely because its democratic
process denied the U.S. the right to launch an invasion of Iraq
from Turkish soil.
Some know that L. Paul Bremer III, the
U.S. proconsul in Iraq, said in June that while the occupation
imposes "no blanket prohibition" against Iraqi self-rule,
and he's not personally "opposed to it," it
has to occur in "a way that takes care of our concerns Elections
that are held too early can be destructive. It's got to be done
very carefully" (Washington Post, June 28). (In other
words, any democracy, any at all, of Iraqi choosing,
that keeps Iraq aligned to the U.S., dotted with U.S. military
bases, dominated by U.S. capital, will be fine.) It's
not a partisan thing. More recently, Rhode Island Democratic
Senator Jack Reed has warned "A quick, hasty election [in
Iraq] might bring to power a person who doesn't share the values
we're trying to encourage." (Don't you hate it when democracy
does that?) "But the more we wait, the more it looks like
an occupation" (AP, Nov. 29). Duh. And an anonymous administration
official told the International
Herald Tribune, "We're boxed in. We have a highly
difficult set of issues to deal with here. [But w]e can't settle
for just anything that gets us out of Iraq." In other words,
democratic elections tomorrow would bring to power people who
hate us. (Don't you just hate it when, having done things
that encourage people to hate you, they wind up actually doing
so? And so you have to keep them down longer, trying to get them
to stop hating, but in doing that, you make them hate you more,
and Yeah, "boxed in" is a good term for it.)
On November 26, senior Shiite cleric
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani (usually described as the most influential
religious figure in Iraq) demanded a general election to create
a new government and draft a constitution. U.S. reaction? The
New
York Times headline said it all: "Iraq's Shiites
Insist on Democracy. Washington Cringes." Word on the street
is the cringing Occupation seeks a compromise falling short of
a democratic election. Occupation supporter Senator
Hillary Clinton has said that while Iraqis "are peripheral
to the real enemies that are trying to attack the United States,"
nonetheless the U.S., having invaded Iraq, should now wait longer
than Bush desires to transfer power to Iraqis---lest democracy
produce the wrong result. Meanwhile, ostensible proponents
of democracy ban reporters from the al-Arabiya cable channel
(based in the pro-U.S. Union of Arab Emirates) from doing their
job in Iraq. Their
reportage has just gotten too inconvenient.
Obviously the U.S. government is less
concerned with establishing "democracy" (even the skewed
bourgeois democracy they find in Muslim societies like Turkey
or Malaysia) than with maintaining a local kiss-ass attitude
towards U.S. imperialism. Kiss ass correctly, and whatever your
flaws, you'll be assigned a position of dignity with the Free
World. Didn't Dubya's father, George
H.W. Bush, back in 1981 (as Reagan's vice president) toast
Philippine fascist dictator Ferdinand Marcos, declaring: "We
love your adherence to democratic principles and to the
democratic process"? h (Just a few years afterwards, during
the "People Power" revolution that toppled Marcos,
Washington gave him his walking papers, and as the scandalous
reports about his murder of Benigno Aquino, his anti-communist
death squads, and colossal pilfering of the national coffers
came to light, whisked him away to comfortable Honolulu exile.)
Bloody Eduard's Democratic
Record
But now back to Georgia. To the long
list of Middle Eastern dictators favored by democracy-promoting
U.S. administrations, let us add the just-deposed President Eduard
Amvrosiyevich Shevardnadze. This man (known in Georgia as "Bloody Eduard"
for his record as the head of the Georgian Ministry of Internal
Affairs, 1965-72, and First Secretary of the Georgian SSR, 1972-85)
is doubly special, his career straddling the Cold War and the
Terror War rather like his nation straddles the Caucasus. In
both wars he proved highly serviceable to Washington's objectives,
and was rewarded accordingly. As the Soviet foreign minister
in the dying days of the USSR, he made it abundantly clear that
his career as Georgia's Communist Party head had really been
a joke, and that his real commitment was to the all-round
restoration of capitalism (in this case, the gangster
capitalism prevalent in post-Soviet states) in cooperation with
the U.S. Later, pronouncing himself a "true son of the
[Georgian Orthodox] Church," Shevardnadze made it plain
to his local power base and foreign backers that he was on the
same page ideologically with the born-again Christians in Washington.
Soon after Georgia gained its independence
from the USSR in 1991, Shevardnadze was elected president of
the new republic, immediately
accessing U.S. largesse, military assistance, the usual package.
Over the following decade the small nation (of five million)
received over a billion dollars in aid. In May 2002, hundreds
of U.S. troops arrived to refurbish two Soviet-era bases,
and train several Georgian SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics)
battalions for use against al Qaeda-linked operatives imagined
to inhabit the Pankisi Gorge region. During the build-up to the
Gulf War, Shevardnadze agreed to let the U.S.
military deploy military aircraft at the Vaziani airbase
50 km from Tbilisi for attacking targets in Iraq. That's friendship.
The oil fields around the Caspian Sea
(mostly in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan) are thought to hold about
10% of the world's known oil. At present it reaches world markets
through pipelines via Russian territory, but the U.S. oil industry
is keen on delivering that oil through friendly puppet states
like Georgia and Afghanistan. A host of U.S. political and corporate
dignitaries have visited Georgia since 1999 to insure that Georgia
resists Russian pressure and stays with the U.S.'s preferred
pipeline program: Zbigniew Brzezinsky, Lloyd Bentsen, John Sununu,
Dick Cheney, former FBI director Louis Freeh, CIA director George
Tenet. Shevardnadze's generally been with the plan (again, a
friend), but
in recent months has given drilling and pipeline concessions
to Russian firms. Washington didn't like that, and on November
2 denounced the recent Georgian elections as fraudulent. According
to Eric Margolis of the Toronto Sun, "Cash and anti-Shevardnadze
political operatives from the U.S. poured into Tbilisi to back
up the president's American-educated principal rival, Mikhail
Saakashvili." This is not to say the uprising against Shevardnadze
wasn't a genuine expression of popular feeling; it's just that
external forces who may have either bolstered or undercut the
president decided to join the Georgian masses and do the latter.
Earlier, one couldn't have expected pointed
criticisms from Washington about electoral irregularities. One
can't have expected condemnation of the suppression of religious
minorities, and the corruption that throve under the white-haired
statesman. One couldn't have expected Shevardnadze to really
help bring democracy to the Middle East. And Washington
didn't expect him to! Here's what Mark Almond, lecturer on
modern history at Oxford, writes in the New Statesman
concerning U.S. handling of this puppet: "Those who pointed
out the routine fraud of his elections or the horrors of his
prisons were denounced by the U.S. State Department. In 1995,
I visited the isolator prison in Tbilisi with a senior official.
Every prisoner had TB. You could smell the vileness of the place
outside the walls. The Georgian official retched on leaving the
building. And the U.S. National Democratic Institute gave Shevardnadze
its Medal of Freedom. Richard Perle told me: 'He is one of
ours.'"
"One of ours," indeed. Washington's
principal, privately communicated, complaint was that the "pace
of economic reform" was too slow, and its aid dollars
were enriching Shevardnadze's cronies rather than paving the
way for pipeline construction. Finally falling out with his
patrons, the Georgian leader, like Mobuto, Marcos, and Suharto
before him, fell---with U.S. approval---not because he was a
vicious, corrupt dictator but because he was no longer effectively
getting the job done. Colin Powell got on the phone with Shevardnadze.
So did the Russian foreign minister, Igor Ivanov. (The Russian
role, according to Dodona Kiziria, a Georgian political analyst,
was dictated by the desire to generate "good will;"
Georgia remains mostly in the U.S. camp, but it
made good sense for Russia to side with the mass movement.)
The U.S. State Department's official
line is that neither it nor Russia removed Shevardnadze.
Washington "certainly stayed in very close touch" with
him during the crisis, and "encouraged him to make decisions
that would lead Georgia forward in a peaceful manner within the
constitution of Georgia." But, adds State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher, "We did not tell him what to do."
(Of course not; that would be anti-democratic.)
On November 23, Shevardnadze resigned
as president. Some reports depict him as a bitter man, angered
that his American patrons, abetted by Ivanov, pronounced his
political death sentence. He has specifically accused American
financier George
Soros (once a friend and ally) of orchestrating his ouster.
Soros has in fact been a backer of Saakashvili, and his involvement
in Georgia does not seem to be coordinated with the Bush team;
indeed, the electoral defeat of Bush in 2004 is among billionaire
Soros' priorities. In an interview with Agence France-Press,
Shevardnadze avoided criticism of the Bush administration itself:
"I don't want to talk about the
United States. They have various bases of power, democratic institutes...
various structures, there are embassies. Some participated, some
helped, some aided. I don't think the administration itself participated
in what happened in Georgia. The West supports realistic power.
They saw, they were convinced that others had come to power.
They said to themselves: 'Shevardnadze was a good person, we
cooperated with him well, but everything comes to an end, he
has a year, year and a half left (in his presidency) and then
he has to leave.' Who are we going to deal with afterwards? They
looked for someone and found those three [Nino Burjanadze, currently
acting president; Zurab Zhvania, State Minister; and Saakashvili]."
Whatever the contradictions between Soros
and the neocons, their interests dovetailed here. But up until
his fall, Medal of Freedom laureate Shevardnadze enjoyed an honored
place in imperialism's hagiographic canon, just as the Sultan
of Oman and the King of Bahrain have acquired more recently.
In the Bushite perspective, they've all been on the side of "democracy
in the Middle East," just as they've been on the right side
in the War on Terrorism and the right side of History. If they
stray a bit, they might be dismissed gently, with a few words
of praise acknowledging their historical services. (Recall Madeleine
Albright's comments about Indonesia's Suharto, just as the old
man was succumbing to a popular uprising in 1998, and the U.S.
was cutting its losses: "Now he has an opportunity for an
historic act of statesmanship [by stepping down]." Thus
he might "preserve his legacy as a man who not only led
his country but provided for its democratic transition."
Suharto,
responsible for about 700,000 deaths, remains honorably at large
in retirement.)
Those that go graciously can, of course, always apply to further
serve democracy by, for example, performing in Pizza
Hut commercials.
* * *
To anyone aware of this background, Bush's
words about Middle East reform ring hollow. Just as the "Free
World" of the Cold War era was really a mishmash of political
forms including brutal dictatorships, the "democracy"
Bush wills upon the expanding American empire is really what
the U.S. has subsidized in Georgia: regimes dependent upon Washington,
hospitable to U.S. troops, positively disposed to U.S. investment,
boasting two or more competing political parties generally committed
to "American political values," with human rights records
that (however awful) can be certified as "improving"
every year. The Georgian "democracy" of yesteryear,
exposed by the recent uprising as a fraud, will give way to another
"democracy" under a new clique, praised and subsidized
by its great patron until it, too, outlives its usefulness.
Gary Leupp
is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor
of Comparative Religion. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
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