Politics: Liberation is a Lot Like Subjugation. Huh.
U.S. and Coalition forces decided that the best way to liberate the people of Iraq was by raiding their newspaper offices, destroying publications and interrogating journalists.
According to the Boston Globe, a new "law" (I use that term loosely; it is the military's own language) bans inciting violence against American troops or any ethnic or religious group in the country. They are now using the law to shut down newspapers that don't agree with their point of view.
This is so clearly emblematic of the Bush administration's approach to this war, and to the very idea of having a massive, swirling force of young American GIs serve as a sprawling, untrained police force. No American law enforcement (save for the very stupid or very corrupt) would look at raiding a newspaper, snatching up all the papers and interrogating the staff. Even the most rudimentary understanding of the law would make it clear that this is not allowed.
But we are more than happy to give the people of Iraq our version of liberation, which apparently doesn't include a free press. I hate to break it to our boys in green, but if they think this is the worst they are going to see as far as opposition, they have another think coming. In many Arab countries, there is a democratic system with elections (as they had yesterday in Jordan). Often, these elections include political parties, just like here. Only some of those parties, unlike here, actually say and do things, and frequently, these parties say things you or I would deplore. But that's a free political system.
Will the Bush administration, six months or six years from now, ban Islamic parties from participating in elections to choose new leaders for Iraq? Will they ban Baathists? At what point does a military action against a former government end and a nation-building enterprise begin? We've stated on the record that we don't want an fundamentalist Islam takeover of Iraq, but if a strongly Islamic party (like the ruling party in Turkey, for instance) wins elections, will we honor the results? Algeria's government was in danger of losing elections to the Islamic party in the late '90s and decided to void the outcome, plunging the country into martial law and a long, bloody civil conflict that simmers today.
The more antagonism against the Islamic groups we engage in now, the more power and influence they will gain with the people of Iraq, especially if we are portrayed more and more accurately as occupiers and not liberators. The massive power and success of Hamas in Palestine is due almost entirely to the perception of many of the poor, hungry Palestinians that Hamas was 1) trying to help them; 2) being kept down by Israel and the PLO; and 3) willing to fight for them. If those things could have been taken away from Hamas ten years ago (and if only the PLO could have been less corrupt), the evolution of the PLO into the Palestinian Authority could have moved on a smoother arc, with recent overtured at peace not menaced by Hamas' power and support within the Palestinian population.
Why would we risk building another Hamas in Iraq?
ON A TOTALLY UNRELATED NOTE: How do we get some of that Coalition action over at Fox News?
U.S. and Coalition forces decided that the best way to liberate the people of Iraq was by raiding their newspaper offices, destroying publications and interrogating journalists.
According to the Boston Globe, a new "law" (I use that term loosely; it is the military's own language) bans inciting violence against American troops or any ethnic or religious group in the country. They are now using the law to shut down newspapers that don't agree with their point of view.
This is so clearly emblematic of the Bush administration's approach to this war, and to the very idea of having a massive, swirling force of young American GIs serve as a sprawling, untrained police force. No American law enforcement (save for the very stupid or very corrupt) would look at raiding a newspaper, snatching up all the papers and interrogating the staff. Even the most rudimentary understanding of the law would make it clear that this is not allowed.
But we are more than happy to give the people of Iraq our version of liberation, which apparently doesn't include a free press. I hate to break it to our boys in green, but if they think this is the worst they are going to see as far as opposition, they have another think coming. In many Arab countries, there is a democratic system with elections (as they had yesterday in Jordan). Often, these elections include political parties, just like here. Only some of those parties, unlike here, actually say and do things, and frequently, these parties say things you or I would deplore. But that's a free political system.
Will the Bush administration, six months or six years from now, ban Islamic parties from participating in elections to choose new leaders for Iraq? Will they ban Baathists? At what point does a military action against a former government end and a nation-building enterprise begin? We've stated on the record that we don't want an fundamentalist Islam takeover of Iraq, but if a strongly Islamic party (like the ruling party in Turkey, for instance) wins elections, will we honor the results? Algeria's government was in danger of losing elections to the Islamic party in the late '90s and decided to void the outcome, plunging the country into martial law and a long, bloody civil conflict that simmers today.
The more antagonism against the Islamic groups we engage in now, the more power and influence they will gain with the people of Iraq, especially if we are portrayed more and more accurately as occupiers and not liberators. The massive power and success of Hamas in Palestine is due almost entirely to the perception of many of the poor, hungry Palestinians that Hamas was 1) trying to help them; 2) being kept down by Israel and the PLO; and 3) willing to fight for them. If those things could have been taken away from Hamas ten years ago (and if only the PLO could have been less corrupt), the evolution of the PLO into the Palestinian Authority could have moved on a smoother arc, with recent overtured at peace not menaced by Hamas' power and support within the Palestinian population.
Why would we risk building another Hamas in Iraq?
ON A TOTALLY UNRELATED NOTE: How do we get some of that Coalition action over at Fox News?
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