The West cares nothing for freedom and democracy
The West only supports democracy when it’s in their interest.
By Matt Kennard on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 - 706 words.
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.
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Matt Kennard
26London
Matt Kennard graduated from the Journalism School at Columbia University as a Toni Stabile Investigative scholar in 2008. He now works for the Financial Times in London. He has written for the Guardian, Salon, The Comment Factory and the Chicago Tribune, amongst others. In 2006 he won the Guardian Student Feature Writer of the Year Award
mattkennard@thecommentfactory.com
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The most you can have is a kind of informal imperialism where the state remains sovereign - you don’t try to interfere in it but you limit its options. This is what, typically, the US has done in Latin America when it is not intervening. The US is formidable. People contrast so-called multilateralism to unilateralist and they think of the United Nations. The US runs the UN and had run the UN for most of the 1990s and that’s what the US can do because the US provides certain resources that no-one else can provide. Nothing much is going to happen in the way of international activity unless the US is part of it and leading it and that’s what the US can return to again. What I think it cannot do is to reconstruct foreign countries on its own without having considerable local support
A) I think liberalish circles question this assumption all the time, e.g. "The war is really about oil," etc. I don't think there is a liberal alive who thinks the wars were about Iraqi freedom or democracy.
B) What do you mean by the West? The Wall Street Journal? The Executive Branch of the US? Or do you think that literally everyone in Western governments does not give a damn about democracy and freedom?
Isn't it an obvious point that western countries (like all countries) are self-interested? And so Western leaders generally promote democracy because they think it is beneficial to their interests in the long run, and yet do not support democratically elected governments that are against their interests? Is it necessarily the case that if a country says, "we support democracy" it means "we support democracy in all its forms." I don't think any Western leader has ever said the latter.
I'm not at all saying that I think Western governments aren't hypocritical in their official stances on democracy. Far from it. I just don't really see the big surprise here.
Although the US may refuse to acknowledge it, it is not representative of all "the West".
Are you saying that the "West's" (read US) government's and the US media's stance is that of all the people of the Western world? I don't think so.
Democracy does not represent everybody, but the majority, so I don't think you can conclude that "the West" doesn't respect or believe in democracy.
Where does your opinion sit on events in Thailand or Fiji, where the democratically elected government is thrown out by angry protestors or ethnic groups?
Sorry, I don't think I've expressed my opinion here very well… Will try to do better next time
Winston Churchill: It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
I'm not saying the US is all the people of the Western world, but it's interesting to look at the US as they have the most leverage, but the governments of Europe don't work much different, just look at Germany's initiation of the NATO war on Serbia in 1999
Thanks for the comment Vishal. And you are right it isn't a big surprise, or at least shouldn't be. But if you read the mainstream media oped pages, and even the serious scholarship on this topic the whole thing is imbued with this sense of "manifest destiny" — that the US is a discontinuity in the power politics of history and has a grand vision for democracy blah. The same in the UK too.
Obvious point that Western countries (like all countries) are self-interested, but not obvious enough to stop a large percentage of the intelligensia believing in fairytales.
MattK why don't you answer Dash's question?
Where does your opinion sit on events in Thailand or Fiji, where the democratically elected government is thrown out by angry protestors or ethnic groups?
Also can we let parties participate in a democratic election when their sole wish is to end it?