Where’s the democracy?

“Ephraim Halevy, the former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and the current national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, says plans have been made for a substantial U.S. military presence in the Middle East lasting decades,” reports Al-Jazeera.

But, as one could infer from Democracy Now!‘s comments this morning, this most definitely will be a military, not democratic or humanitarian, presence, and the deaths of Iraqis just don’t mean that much:

Millions of people across Europe are observing a two-minutes silence today to remember the victims of last week’s London bombings. At least 52 people were killed and 700 injured in the blasts.

But few people remember that just three days after the bombings last Thursday, a series of suicide attacks in Iraq left 48 people dead – an eerily similar death toll to London – and the difference in the world’s reaction was tangible.

Below: Where’s the democracy? Was it ever here?

DN!’s words preface its indepth interview today (audio/video) with journalist Dahr Jamail “about his new report, ‘Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation,’ the ‘brain drain’ out of Iraq, and the difference in the media’s coverage of the repeated attacks in Iraq and last week’s London bombings.”

In a related disturbing report that further exposes the absence of any implementation of U.S. Constitution-inspired individual legal protections — from which I draw that only military objectives, not legal principles, are emphasized in the U.S. occupation — Slate‘s newspaper round-up points out that:

[A]nother “dozen Sunni Muslim men were found dead after being arrested by Iraqi police over the weekend. The NYT mentions the usual signs of torture.

“Now when anyone is arrested, his family expects him dead within a few days,” one moderate Sunni leader told the Post.

Not that the widely publicized abuse of prisoners by U.S. forces in Iraq, at Gitmo, and in Aghanistan would inspire any new behavior by Iraqi jailers.

In a “lengthy op-ed column in the April 24 issue of Ha’aretz,” adds Al-Jazeera, Halevy dissects the U.S. presence in the Middle East:

High-ranking U.S. policymakers have “raised the idea of establishing an American trusteeship regime in the areas of the Palestinian Authority, if it should turn out that the Palestinians are not ripe for self-rule. That arrangement would require an American operational military presence along Israel’s border with the Palestinian territories.”

“Speaking in a semi-closed forum during a visit to Israel a few months ago,” continued Halevy, “Bill Kristol, one of the most influential ‘neocons’ in the United States, noted in this connection that the American presence in Europe after World War II lasted for nearly 60 years. Israelis who are trying to promote a role for NATO in the region, in one form or another, are actually promoting a generation-long American presence.”

U.S. entanglement in the Middle East in the name of “democracy” has further destabilized the region and made more likely violent revolutions to occur, especially in countries such as Saudi Arabia.

“In [an early April] visit to the United States,” comments Halevy, “I was told by several well-informed observers that should one of the more severe scenarios come to pass, the United States will have no choice but to deepen its presence in the Middle East. To that end, it will have to renew the draft, to ensure that there are enough forces to deal with developing situations in countries like Saudi Arabia.”

Where did the democracy go?

Was it ever here?

If we search hard, will we find it? Even here?