Washington's war on democracy

BY ROHAN PEARCE

Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, President George Bush's speechwriters have never been shy about employing grand, bombastic turns of phrase. The commentators of the corporate media treat his empty and dishonest phraseology as profoundly important. Despite the White House's deceptions in the lead-up to the Iraq war and the continuing lie that Iraq is being “liberated”, Bush's November 6 announcement of Washington's “new policy” — “a forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East” — was not greeted with the derision it deserved.

“This strategy requires the same persistence and energy and idealism we have shown before”, Bush told the US Chamber for Commerce. “And it will yield the same results. As in Europe, as in Asia, as in every region of the world, the advance of freedom leads to peace.”

Bush lauded the “progress” towards democracy by Washington's despotic allies: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Oman and Qatar. “Bad” nations — Iran, Syria, Palestine — were slammed.

A November 6 article by the Washington Post's Fred Barbash claimed that the speech “reflected the views of a generation of neo-conservative thinkers and government leaders, who support US activism in spreading democratic government and free markets to those parts of the world that have yet to adopt them”.

National Endowment for Democracy
Bush's speech marked the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED, notes William Blum in Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, is an organisation which “does exactly the opposite of what its name implies”.

The NED doesn't promote majority rule, but uses “democracy” as a codeword for achieving the foreign policy goals of US imperialism. The organisation describes itself as playing a “critical, complementary role to official US government efforts to promote democracy abroad”, maintaining that it is a “private, non-profit, grant-making organisation” — exclusively funded by the US government.

The NED's board includes such luminaries as: Frank Carlucci, a defence secretary under US President Ronald Reagan, a former deputy director of the CIA and chairperson of shadowy merchant bank the Carlye Group; Vin Weber, a former leader of the Republican Party in the US House of Representatives, head of right-wing think tank Empower America and a “super lobbyist” for corporations, such as Microsoft and Mobil; neo-conservative guru Francis Fukuyama; and Michael Novak, from the leading “hawk” think tank, the American Enterprise Institute
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http://www.greenleft.org.au/current/565p16.htm