The Comment Factory

In the vast amount of mainstream criticism of the War on Terror self-avowed media “skeptics” tell us that the whole operation was a “mistake” or a case of “misplaced idealism”.

What is hardly ever questioned — even within liberalish circles — is the narrative that the US and UK actually wanted to bring democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq as part of a grand vision for the dark corners of Middle East. This is dangerous because on inspection this assumption isn’t only a bit wrong, it is literally the inverse of the truth.

Recent events around the world have highlighted the degree to which the so-called “Free World” — or its politicians and parrots in the media — stand against freedom and democracy, living up to their lofty rhetoric only when democracy works the way it should — i.e. voters elect leaders they like.

The most recent example is Venezuela, where the people of that country voted democratically last week to discard term limits and put the Venezuelan political system on a democratic par with dictatorships like Britain and Australia.

To US commentators this was impossible to accept, even though they had watched Mayor Mike Bloomberg of New York do the exact same thing without shedding too many democratic tears (Bloomberg is very popular like Chavez).

So the Wall Street Journal comments:

“Mr. Chávez covets regional and global legitimacy even as he consolidates his authoritarian rule and seeks to undermine neighboring U.S. ally Colombia.”

In the Wall Street Journal “consolidating authoritarian rule” is what the rest of us call an election. And, similarly, “undermining neighboring U.S ally Colombia” is what they call Colombia bombing the sovereign country of Ecuador and Venezuelan (and the rest of Latin America) condemning this war crime. The Latin American leaders are alive to this terrorist gambit backed by the US government and its media mouthpieces. Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador have all now expelled the US ambassadors from their countries to stop any chance of anti-democratic subversion. Every country that wants to lead an independent course, in tune with the will of their people, should take this course.

The complete lack of respect or belief for democracy is mirrored among governments and media across the political spectrum and across Western countries. And it shouldn’t surprise anyone; it’s never been any different. The great lie of post-colonialist narrative is that as Third World dependencies broke from their foreign masters they embarked on a course of indepedence shorn of their imperialist masters. But the control is now as strong as ever and kept up through an economic matrix rather than a bayonet. And our contribution is not just an uninterested neutrality, we often actively support anti-democratic elements when we don’t like the way the meddlesome people have voted.

Another salient example from recent history is Hamas who were democratically elected in 2006 by a stricken Palestinian population sick of the corruption and incompetence of their Fatah rulers. The first thing the Western world did was to punish the Palestinians for voting the “wrong way” by imposing a siege which has caused untold suffering and pain over the last three years. On top of that the US orchestrated a coup in Gaza (with the help of mercenary Muhammed Dahlan) which hoped to topple the democratically elected Hamas government. It failed, like the attempted coup against the democratically-elected government of Venezuela in 2002, because the people of both those places refused to have their will bent to the way of the global superpower.

How does the media react to Hamas? When Israel was murdering 1,300 Palestinians over a barbarous two week period in December and January, the Wall Street Journal, commented, “The more damage to Hamas, the better the chances for peace,” which is calling for peace through destroying a democratically elected government, which is calling for killing people for the crime of voting for their chosen party.

Because the population of the US and its surrogates are so firmly entrenched in this matrix of lies and disinformation the journalists cannot even see how ridiculous they look, or are too stupid to notice. The US and the West generally has no care for real democracy or justice, and will only support it if their subjects vote the “right way” in the election, i.e. ready for pillage. Some freedom.