“We cannot accept this result as legitimate because it does not meet international standards and because there has not been an investigation of the numerous and credible reports of fraud and abuse,” said America’s out-going Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Unfortunately for those democrats currently shipping out to New Zealand or crossing over to Canada, he wasn’t referring to the recent US elections, shrouded in allegations of electronic vote rigging and voter exclusion, neither to the 2000 election when its final outcome was placed in the hands of white-haired, mostly Republican Supreme Court judges.
Instead, seemingly unaware of the adage about people in glass houses, Powell arrogantly appoints himself arbiter over elections in a former Soviet republic, and warns of dire repercussions if events don’t go his way, which, in shades of the Cold War, has set the US head-to-head with Russia.
Writers in the Russian media suggest it wouldn’t be too much of an imagination stretch to see Russian tanks heading for Kiev now that the US and the EU have attempted to stir the already boiling pot.
So while the US expects Ukraine’s fledging democracy to resemble Sweden’s, it has set in stone Jan. 30 for democratic elections in war-torn, occupied Iraq over the protests of 17 of Iraq’s main Sunni and Kurdish political parties, which want to wait another six months.
The hawkish US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a well-known doyen of the faux pas — who was understandably kept well away from Bush’s re-election campaign — has warned swathes of Iraq may be excluded from the ballot box.
“Let’s say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three quarters or four fifths of the country but in some places you couldn’t because the violence was too great. So be it,” he straight-facedly told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“Nothing’s perfect in life. So you have an election that’s not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet,” he said.
So let’s see if we understand this. According to top-ranking US officials, Ukraine’s election, which gave the pro-Russian candidate a three percent lead, is deeply flawed, while the Iraqis should be content with the idea that half an election is better than none.
Those ingénues who still believe that the US government represents a force for good should think again. The Bush administration’s apparent double standards when it comes to elections are, in fact, single-minded geostrategic positioning and control over dwindling global energy resources.
Explaining, the US attitude to the Ukrainian election, geopolitical and intelligence expert Larry Chin writes, “whichever powers manage to prevail will hold the key to the control of Eurasian oil and energy, the political control of the Eurasian corridor itself and the survival of Russia as a nation”.
Given that the Bush cabal makes no secret of the fact it will brook no challengers to its new world supremacy, it is very much in its interests to nudge the Ukraine in the direction of NATO and the comparatively pliable EU rather than have it land in the arms of a growingly militant Moscow.
Naturally, the Bush administration’s meddling in Ukraine’s affairs isn’t marketed by the manipulated Western media in terms of real politik but, rather, clothed with sentimentality as a people’s revolution, or freedom versus oppression.
As John Laughland, writing in The Guardian, puts it: “Whether it is Albania in 1997, Serbia in 2000, Georgia last November or Ukraine now, our media regularly peddle the same fairy tale how youthful demonstrators manage to bring down an authoritarian regime, simply by attending a rock concert in a central square.”
“Our tendency...to present the West as a fairy godmother swooping in to save the day, is not only a way to salve a guilty conscience about our own political shortcomings; it also blinds us to the reality of continued brazen Western intervention in the democratic politics of other countries,” Laughland concludes. This is where we differ.
I do not believe the West suffers from a guilty conscience over its overseas shenanigans, including the positioning of agents provocateurs in already troubled, often oil-rich, nations, the financial backing and arming of opposition groups, state-sponsored assassinations and the liberal use of bribes and threats.
Indeed, most American and British leaders wouldn’t recognize a guilty conscience if it rose up and hit them in the face as we can deduce from their continued trumpeting of the “success” which is supposed to be Iraq. The eagerness of Bush and Blair to see January elections is more to do with developing a face-saving exit strategy than bringing freedom and democracy to the beleaguered Iraqis.
They know full well that any election held without the support of 40 percent of the country will be little more than a sham and may even lead to a bloodbath. There will not be international monitors at the polling stations because it’s too dangerous, and instead there will be US tanks.
What’s the betting that whoever emerges from that as the nation’s “duly elected new leader” will be little more than yet another American marionette willing to join the sycophantic club of US client states.
The scenario will go like this. Republicans will pat themselves on the back for a job well done, the anointed or appointed will be whisked off to be paraded around the Rose Garden and given a little speech to read out to Congress. Back in Iraq, American soldiers will be less visible and the international media circus will head for the next meal on the pre-emption menu.
While the US military will retire to its permanent bases, the representatives of Uncle Sam will forever pull strings from behind the walls of the world’s biggest and, most fortified, American Embassy. Still unconvinced? As evidence emerges that both the US and Britain knew in advance of a plot by former SAS mercenaries to launch a putsch in the oil-rich Equatorial Guinea and failed to warn that country’s government as per international law, we are left to wonder whether there is a lot more to this than meets the eye.
Once again, we’ll never know the truth but we can be sure of one thing: Western politicians may not be as overtly ruthless as Saddam Hussein or Slobodan Milosovich, but as wolves in democracy’s clothing, they are often more dishonest and equally as dangerous.
— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback.
