Folks in the Bush Administration think that
Democracy shouldn't involve elections?
Why is anyone surprised at this attitude
from the *Bush* Administration?
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http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=16806
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Tragedy in New York: French Fried Friedman
Greg Palast, GregPalast.com
September 19, 2003
It's tragic but true. All New York mourns the
last remaining neurons of Thomas Friedman's
shrinking brain, apparently lost in a bubbling
hot tub of deep self-inflicted fatuity today.
The evidence is in Friedman's loony-tunes
comment, "Our War with France"
(http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,266162,00.html),
in this morning's Paper of Record. You can only
conclude the man's mind has been flambéd or
deeply French Fried.
What got Friedman's brain a-boilin' is the
impertinent suggestion by French diplomats
that, if the US invaded Iraq to bring
democracy, then why not allow Iraqis to vote.
Vote! Can you imagine! It's all that silly
'libertay, equalitay' stuff that
unsophisticated Americans believed before
the Patriot Act.
Friedman calls voting a, "loopy symbolic
transfer of Iraqi sovereignty." Friedman,
Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein all have the
same line: Iraqis aren't ready for democracy.
Well, I suppose Tom Paine would have
disagreed -- but, hell, he moved to France.
(Maybe Friedman and his White House
well-wishers are offended by the idea that
Iraq would count ballots before Florida.)
France's election suggestion was prompted
by our Secretary of State, the pitiable
Colin Powell who, on his boss Rumsfeld's
orders, demanded the European Union pony up
$5 billion cash to rebuild the parts of Iraq
we bombed. (Dollars only, euros not
accepted.) And, says the Rummy to Elderly
Europe, "Send us 25,000 troops and put 'em
under US command." After all, didn't we
graciously replace France in Vietnam after
Dien Bien Phu? Apparently, Rumsfeld thought
France would jump at the chance for another
game of Colonial Quagmire.
This is no longer a fight about whether the
invasion was right or wrong. The question
now is occupation or, bluntly, re-colonization.
Saddam's gone. Therefore, our kids are dying
over there for a single purpose: to prevent an
election. Remember when General Jay Garner
called for a vote in 90 days?
Here's why we can't have an election (and
why the General got the boot): Bush's oil
patch buddies can't complete the sell-off
of Iraq's oil fields under an elected Iraqi
government -- no elected Iraqi government
would let it happen. Rather than take on
the issue of oil and blood, Friedman fries
the French.
Get off it, Tommy -- this is not about France.
This is about a bunch of half-baked cowboys in
the White House who made a mess in Mesopotamia
and now want Europe to pay the bill before an
enraged, bankrupt American electorate throws
the Bushitas out on their big fat deficit.
And how /dare/ Friedman say that France doesn't
care about the War on Terror? France declared
war on Osama and his madmen years before
September 11 got Bush to change from the view
of his advisor, Robert Oakley, that we shouldn't
have a "fixation" on getting rid of bin Laden.
French intelligence warned Bush to stop playing
footsie with the Taliban, to stop coddling the
Saudi Islamic dictatorship, to stop running
interference for the bin Laden family. But
would Little George listen? Noooo.
Friedman's line -- like Rumsfeld's -- is
arrogant, self-delusional and dangerous.
/Tres/ French.
Greg Palast <http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm>
is author of the New York Times bestseller, "The
Best Democracy Money Can Buy."
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