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08/17/2005: And more Good News...
I'm on a PC - reformat "Break Time" (waiting for some programming and driver information CD's from our new office to be unpacked) and doing a bit of blog reading. So- here's this one from Maureen Dowd, who has encapulated the growing sense of unease Americans see over how it's going (NOT) in Iraq in Biking to Nowhere:"...they had better tell the Boy in the Bubble, who continues to dwell in delusion, hailing the fights and delays on the Iraqi constitution as "a tribute to democracy."
The president's pedaling as fast as he can, but he's going nowhere."
As she writes about this Washington Post Article concerning Revised Administration Expectations: "The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.
"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."
....
But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.
Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.
....
But the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.
Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent...."
I wrote this comment last fall and it's worth repeating again:
I have a comment on Grahams’ multiple examples of attempts made to warn George Bush that his plan for Iraq would become a huge, destabilizing mess, bad for the entire Middle eastern region and impossible for even for “friendly” Muslim countries to support.
It’s like hoping that if you blow up an entire city, as the bricks and plaster rain down from the sky, some of the pieces will fall and regroup themselves into a perfectly constructed, immaculate rendition of the ideal American House of Democracy just ready and waiting for its new occupant. While, in the realm of an “everything is possible” theoretical version of the world…don’t they always say if enough monkey’s were given typewriters one of them could eventually compose a Shakespeare sonnet?…it’s just more likely that when you create the mass destruction and chaos throughout an entire country and its society you’ll end up with a large, uncertain mess that’s about as likely to reform itself into this American ideal (as seen through the rose-colored prism of G.W. Bush’s now famous “spreading liberty” worldview) as monkey’s writing Shakespeare.
What was, and is, far more realistic to assume is that even with the “freedom to choose” and “elections” for its now liberated-to-become-their-own-renegade-warlords and guerilla militia leaders, the populace in these countries will not end up a model of American democracy, but a model Theocracy of narrow extremist religious views. It is far more likely that there will be a continuation of warring factions fighting for the slim reins of power and control over rival religious points of view.
Those that don’t win in these elections will just go out and take their own chunk of the liberated pie by force or coercion. In the lawlessness and chaos, and with long rooted histories in localized tribal rule rather than acquiescence to and outright aversion for strong central government, it is the most foreseeable scenario that these groups will continue to just ignore our “democratizing” efforts or create more insurgency to fight them.
The vacuum of control has allowed in real Al Qaeda elements to enter (or re-enter) and organize and flourish as well. It’s already happening, as predicted, in both Afghanistan and in Iraq today.
Even on my soccer mom's budget of time, research ability I've come to see that there aren't many places where democracy flourishes at the end of the muzzle of a foreign invader's gun unless it translates into the that "security" and "promised peace."
And an Iraqi Islamic Republic with "laws to be compliant with Islam" and failing to secure women's rights is hardly a "model" for Democratic Reformation of the Middle East and spreadin that "Freedom" and "Liberties" promised by our Fearless Leader.
Karen on 08.17.05 @ 08:38 AM CST
