Tyranny of the democracies!

Not so fast. It is very convenient to say that the US, the UK, their allies and their intelligence agencies were not, "all wrong." Facts lead us otherwise. Former Treasury Secretary O'Neill, a Republican who had sat in on nation security council meetings, said that the Bush administration began planning for war against Iraq immediately after taking office, well before the horrors of September 11. After the dire prediction of an imminent nuclear, biological and chemical threat from Iraq in his state of the union address last year, in this year's state of the union address Mr. Bush sought to justify the unjustifiable by stressing that Iraq had "WMD-related-programme activity," as though that cunning rhetoric somehow vindicated his earlier erroneous assertions about imminent threats and WMDs. Vice President Cheney remains defiant in the face of truth: contrary to evidence and Kay's findings, Cheney still maintains that Iraq had WMD! Deputy defence secretary and Zionist Dr. Paul Wolfowitz, the architect of the war, now admits that the Americans would not have supported the war if the rationale were simply to overthrow Saddam Hussein. To win over the Americans, the warmongers masterfully used the bogey of imminent threat to America from a WMD-loaded Iraq.

Once again the Bush administration has shifted the goal post. Instead of owning up to the lies and the deceptions perpetrated on the American people to satisfy the US military-industrial complex's hunger for war, the new Bush line is: "Forget about WMDs! Isn't the world a beautiful place without Saddam?"

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In a new book titled "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," Republican Kevin P. Phillips (former aide to Republican President Richard Nixon) says: "Three generations of immersion in the culture of secrecy … deceit and disinformation have become Bush hallmarks." Entitlement, elitism, privilege, secrecy, mediocrity, corruption, financial cronyism, bailouts of family failures by the taxpayers -- these are some of the characteristics of the Bush dynasty. Across the pond, in England, award-winning journalist John Pilger, who has meticulously documented war from the battlefields of Vietnam to Iraq notes this about the latest Anglo-American military adventure: "An ascendant mafia now rules the United States, and the (British) Prime Minister is in the thrall of it. Together, they empty noble words 'liberation, freedom and democracy' of their true meaning. The unspoken truth is that behind the bloody conquest of Iraq, is the conquest of us all: of our minds, our humanity and our self-respect at the very least. If we say or do nothing, victory over us is assured."

Not a ringing endorsement of the world's two oldest democracies, is it? While every nation that calls itself a democracy takes enormous pride in it, the world has not agreed on what constitutes a democracy. In the United States, there is only one national election every four years -- the Presidential election. (All other elections are local or state elections.) In the Presidential election of 2000, Democratic Presidential candidate Al Gore received over 600,000 more popular votes nationwide than the Republican candidate George W. Bush. Yet, the second place finisher, Bush, is the President! What kind of democracy is this? The Republicans can talk about the Electoral College all they want, but the fact remains that over 600,000 more Americans voted for Gore than did for Bush. Gore would have probably won the Electoral College contest as well if the Florida Supreme Court-mandated vote recount had been allowed to continue. But no, the five Republican Presidents-appointed judges of the United States Supreme Court stopped the recount and handed Bush the Presidency! What kind of democracy is that?

Israel was founded on stolen Palestinian land and the expulsion of the native Palestinians. Israel continues to steal Palestinian lands, build illegal settlements on those, carry out targeted assassination of Palestinians, inflict collective punishments on the Palestinians through mass blockades, blow up the houses of the relatives of the suicide bombers, has a history of massacring Palestinian men, women and children, yet, Israel proudly claims to be the "only democracy in the Middle East." If bloodthirsty Israel, a real axis-of-evil nation, is a proud democracy, how can a brutal dictatorship be worse? America and Europe agree with Israel that Israel must remain a "Jewish democracy." If democracy also needs a religious label as Israel demands, then India becomes, "a Hindu democracy," Bangladesh a "Muslim democracy," and America a "Christian democracy." No wonder the racists of South Africa had attempted to pass off apartheid (separation of races) as "plural democracy!"

The New York Times noted in a recent editorial that although a majority of the residents of the state of Pennsylvania are Democrats, the Republican hold 70 per cent of the congressional seats from that state. This is through what is known as gerrymandering, or redrawing of congressional district in a moth-eaten manner to enhance the strength of one party and dilute the strength of the other. Recently, in Texas, the Republican gerrymandering took such an outrageous shape that Democratic legislators walked out and had to escape to neighbouring state of Oklahoma to prevent the passage of the legislation. Is this a good advertisement for democracy?

Democratic politicians routinely mislead the public, tell untruths and half-truths, lie and deceive, and distort the sayings and accomplishments of their opponents. Two of the most decent recent Presidents of the United States, Republican Gerald Ford and Democrat Jimmy Carter, were hounded out of office, although both were incumbent Presidents. Democracy is an arena where the deceiver, not the decent, thrives. In spite of all his hypocrisy vis-à-vis Iraq President Bush remains immensely popular. One may ask: if democracy is touted to be so good, why is it not practiced in the United Nations Security Council where a single veto by a permanent member destroys the collective wisdom of, and justice sought by the rest of the world? (Something the US does routinely to exonerate Israeli crimes.) The answer is: the mask of democracy has to come off as soon as it stands in the way of what the democracies really want. The world has just witnessed how the world's democracies lied to, cheated and deceived the world to attack Iraq for its oil, and to destroy one of Israel's enemies. The rest of the world is not worried about attacks by the dictators anymore, they are more afraid of the tyranny of the democracies!