A free press and equality before the law are two of the principles the American and British governments claim to hold most dear. The antithesis of these key elements is for them the tyranny of international terrorism, in which there are no freedoms and no legal niceties.
It is therefore a basic plank of Washington’s global war against terrorism and terrorist states that the Bush White House is promoting a democratic world in which these values of journalistic independence and the impartial administration of justice are pivotal. The US continues to push its political and judicial agenda upon the Iraqis. It matters not that the United States and its few allies that the coalition can barely control Iraq’s security situation. US-style democracy and justice are what the Iraqis are going to get, whether they like it or not.
The complex and ethnically diverse peoples of Afghanistan were always a different story. Only in the heady days of invasion did the Bush White House indulge in rhetoric about democracy. With the ouster of the Taleban and its Al-Qaeda clients, common sense has prevailed. It is increasingly recognized that US-style democracy is not the only, nor indeed necessarily the best, way in which a citizen may express his views to his rulers. Washington was never going to argue the point in Afghanistan. The major purpose of the invasion was to destroy Al-Qaeda’s principal support system.
But the pitch for political and juridical change in Iraq is more important. Washington reckons that if it can stop the violence and exert its influence on Iraqis with something other than a gun, it can build itself a model state in something like its own image.
Leaving aside its profound lack of understanding of the dynamic tensions that have existed in post-Ottoman Iraq, Washington does not seem to appreciate that its own behavior has already convinced many Iraqis that it is never to be trusted. Take the freedom of the press. The Al-Jazeera TV station has pulled off a series of journalistic coups, not limited to broadcasting tapes apparently from Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Most of the stories have discomfited the US occupation authorities. Their response has been to target Al-Jazeera journalists in Iraq, the latest of whom to be harassed, a cameraman, was released without charges yesterday two days after being arrested.
And then there is the extremely questionable detention of suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Guantanamo Bay in a legal limbo. This hardly seems like justice from a country that prides itself on the rule of law. Even their faithful British allies have been critical of the Americans over this. But then of course the British themselves have been holding ten suspected terrorists without trial for almost two years now. Double standards are not confined to Washington.
