"American-Style Democracy" 2.0

Clifton Ross: “American-Style Democracy”2.0

VHeadline guest commentator Clifton Ross writes: In the grand old days of the Reagan presidency we heard the oft-repeated phrase, “American-style democracy.”
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=25051

The imperial cadre around the already senile maximum leader wouldn’t be satisfied that, for instance, then-Sandinista President Daniel Ortega had been elected with a larger majority of his people than Reagan had gotten in the US elections.

Rather, what concerned them, as they wept crocodile tears for the Nicaraguan people under Sandinista “oppression,” was that the “style” of the democracy be “American.”

Those of us who had seen first-hand how poor people were taught to read, given free health care, alleviated of the state terror under which they had lived through the Somoza years (the Somoza Dynasty having been brought to power and sustained by ”American-style democracy”), those of us who had seen first-hand the overwhelming support the people had given to the revolutionary process in Nicaragua under the leadership of the FSLN (Frente Sandinista Liberacion Nacional) were mystified by the term, ”American-style democracy.”

In the intervening years and now, especially, the meaning of the term has become clear. On Sunday, the world will witness “American-style democracy” in Iraq where the single international election observer will remain securely locked away in the US protected ”green zone” because to venture out might cost that lone observer his or her life.

The candidates, also, confront a similar problem to that of the anonymous international observer: forced anonymity and confinement. That is, the candidates for political office in Iraq must remain anonymous and confined to secret locations for fear of their lives.

The elections, hailed by the fraudulent President Bush, are being held amidst bombings and gunfire from both the occupying US troops and the Iraqi patriots. The polling places are also, in a sense, anonymous, since to announce their location in advance of the vote would make them targets of attack.

Ah ha.

So this is what is meant by the “secret ballot” in ”American-style democracy.”

This is the scenario for “American-style democracy 2.0,” the updated version created by a “president” who was first selected by the Supreme Court and then later imposed by fraud, manipulation and purchasing of the media and intimidation of voters.

The same strategies are being used full strength in Iraq that were effectively applied in the US and it is clear that the Bush regime will undoubtedly manipulate the Iraqi vote (as they did in Florida, 2000, Ohio, 2004 and elsewhere) with the outcome that the Iraqi people will ”elect” hand-picked U.S. candidates who will encourage the genocidal occupiers of their nation to tarry a little longer in Iraq.

But there are more serious problems in these Iraqi show trial elections. As Felicity Arbuthnot points out in her article, “Iraq Elections: Farce of the Century,” “according to a renowned expert on international law, Sabah Al Mukhtar, the London-based President of the League of Arab Lawyers, the election is not alone fatally flawed, it is illegal.

Under the Vienna Convention, an occupying force has no right to change composition of occupied territories socially, culturally, educationally or politically.

This election was based on the laws laid down by former ‘Viceroy’ American Paul Bremer and is entirely unconstitutional. Bremer personally appointed the overseers for the election, says Al Mukhtar, thus, far from ‘free and fair’ and heralding Iraqi ’democracy’ they are entirely engineered by Bush’s man.”

In the final analysis, what the advocates of ”American-style democracy” fear most of all is the substance of democracy. Like Hollywood movies in which the late B-rated Ronald Reagan starred, ”American-style democracy” is all style and special effects, no substance. Participation of the people, the rule of the people, the very definition of “demos (the common, people) +cracy” (rule, authority) is precisely what “American-style democracy” is intended to prevent.

Governments that allow popular rule are to be subverted and destroyed. Hence, the forty-five year attack against Cuba which, for all the problems of its political system, attempts to empower the popular will primarily through socialist economy and democracy, or the US governments brutal terrorist war against Sandinista Nicaragua which eventually led to the demise of that revolutionary experiment in true, popular democracy.

It must be assumed that the same reasons come into play when the US castigates the Venezuelan government. Those usurpers of the title, “American,” those who have assumed ownership of the continent and who proclaim themselves directors of its destiny, wish to return Venezuela’s transformation of representative democracy into participatory democracy back to the mere symbolic “representation.”

That Venezuela in its elections had not one anonymous observer in lock-down conditions on a US military base, but rather many observers, including ex-US President Jimmy Carter, who freely and openly roamed the country and observed the smallest details of the process offended the stylish taste of the US elite.

That the computers all had printouts of the vote, unlike the computers in the US (in Ohio, for instance) or that every vote was counted in the referendum (unlike in Florida 2000 or Colorado 2004 and elsewhere where they were either left uncounted or shredded) would that be considered “garish” or “out-of-style”?

But what of the substance of what we must insist on calling, for reasons of accuracy and so as not to besmirch the good name of, and offend, all other peoples of the Americas, “US-style democracy”?

The ”style” is the form, the dressing, but it clothes something of substance, and that substance is familiar to most peoples of the Americas. In this case, the wolf in the sheepskin of “American-style democracy 2.0” never changes and it has historically been fascism in its purest form. Americans from Tierra del Fuego to Mexico and around the world have known it as the fascism of client states like Rios Montt and others in Guatemala, the Argentine Generals of the 70s, Pinochet in Chile, Somoza in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba -- and the list goes on endlessly up to the present occupation of Iraq.

Once the puppets are in place, the show moves to the next country where ”US-style democracy” can bring death, destruction and repression to a people in the name of “freedom and liberty” and, of course, “elections.”

Clif Ross
clifross@clifross.org
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=25051

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