As the word about the overwhelming victory of the Hamas Movement in Palestine became emerged, one could see in the faces of the TV anchors and the written words of the op-ed writers the consternation that something had gone horribly wrong in the conventional wisdom about the Democracy Experiment According to George W.Bush.How can a people elect representatives of a faction not approved by the editors of the NYT and WaPo? What possessed these people to go against the dictates of Bill Keller, Len Downie and above all Condi Rice and her warnings?
That our rulers have no idea what the people of the world think about them or their policies has been apparent for more than a half century.In Vietnam, as they plunged that unfortunate country into a war for no apparent reason and lied Americans into sacrificing countless lives and untold billions,they kept invoking the spectre of Communism and Domino Theory in an ever changing rationale for the War.In Iraq, they have resorted to the same lies all over again,with the same results.
Through it all,we hear Bush speaking about how he plans to bring Democracy and Freedom to that benighted part of the world just as Lyndon Johnson and Nixon promised to do the same for Vietnam.To understand what Bush means by Democracy and what the people directly affected by these words think is to realize that we live in two entirely different worlds with no connection between them.
On the one hand, we have people like Bush whose version of Democracy includes only the holding of demonstration elections ( as described by Edward Herman) ratifying the elevation of U.S. lackeys to power.That permits unfettered access to the resources of the countries receiving Uncle Sam’s attention for corporations like Halliburton,Exxon,Mobil and others.
The word Democracy, for people of the regions affected
means an entirely different thing.It means having a hope,in the distant future, that their children will have adequate food, shelter, medical attention and the ordinary means of subsistence.That also means to them that they would not be subjected to violence and arbitrary arrests and “disappearance” by dictators.
No wonder when Bush speaks those words, it invites ridicule from the masses of the world.This is why every so called Leader in Latin America who is associated with U.S. in any way is tainted and has no prospect of ever gaining power by legitimate means.The American model of Economic Development based on unsustainable debts and catering to the needs of the wealthy elites of the local population and,of course, the wealthy elites of our own,now lies in tatters.A similar process has begun with the election of the Hamas faction in Palestine.
In the not too distant future, one can expect all the dictators from Mubarak,the Sauds,the Al Sabahs,Musharraf and others to bite the dust sinking Bush’s dream of hegemony.I do not know who will emerge as the victors but one can be certain that,like Latin America, any one even remotely associated with us will be firmly rejected by the people of the region.
The world has been at the receiving end of our hegemonic needs for a long time.After Katrina, our own people have come to sense the essential truth of what Kanye West said about Bush.While it is obvious Bush does not care about black people, there is no need to stop at that.He simply does not care about anyone who has not had the good fortune to be born into wealth and privilege, whether it is in this country or any where else in the world.His depraved indifference to life after Katrina or the Tsunami sprang from the same poisoned well.