Brothers under the skin
by Justin Raimondo
The idea that we invaded and occupied Iraq and launched a bid to “transform” the Middle East because we wanted to install liberal, democratic societies in the region is just not believable on many levels, and certainly recent headlines about the Palestinian coup by Fatah against Hamas – and the president’s endorsement of the Abbas putsch – underscore this point. One year after Hamas soundly defeated the old, corrupt Fatah movement at the polls, the former has been expelled from the government by the unilateral action of “President” Abbas and is outlawed in the West Bank – where the Fatah-Bush theory of the “unitary presidency” apparently holds sway.
“Democracy” in the Middle East marches on!
Elections in the Middle East are like those in the European Union – if the Powers-That-Be don’t get the result they want, then the results are overturned and a new election is held… a process that continues until the people learn their lesson, i.e., that resistance is futile, and ratify what has already been decided. From the occupied territories to the war-torn cities of Iraq, what was sold as an effort to export “democracy” has instead turned into an effort to import chaos, death, and universal destruction. The “liberation” of Iraq hasn’t let the democratic genie out of the bottle, but it has unleashed sectarian demons that have engulfed the country in a vicious civil war. In Lebanon, our effort to aid the Sunnis as a counterbalance to the Shi’ite Hezbollah has boomeranged, with the Fatah al-Islam group rising up against the U.S.-supported government. In Afghanistan, the regime of “President” Karzai can barely claim control of the capital city of Kabul, while in Pakistan, our biggest and most important ally in the Muslim world, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is being buffeted by the tides of pro-Islamic, anti-American public opinion, and is not expected to last much longer.
By any rational measure, the results of our Middle Eastern policy of regime-change in Iraq and bullying intervention throughout the region have been an abysmal failure from beginning to end. By neoconservative Bizarro World standards, however, what we are witnessing is a smashing success.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11163