And it’s one… two… three… four…
And it’s one, two, three, four –
What are we fightin’ for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn.
Next stop is Vietnam….
-Country Joe and the Fish, “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag”
The Bush administration continues to backpedal on why, exactly, we went into Iraq (“We knew they had WMD. I mean, we thought they had WMD. I mean, we were trying to see if maybe they had WMD. I mean, it was all for the Iraqi people….”), all the while backpedaling on how long they said we’d be in Iraq (“We’ll be out inside a week. I mean, it may take as long as a month. I mean, it’ll be a three-month engagement. All right, I actually meant ‘five years’ when I said ‘one week’...”).
I don’t know about you, but all of the spinning going on in Washington has me reaching for the Dramamine. I’m starting to feel like I’m being spun right down the drain.
AFGHA.com, an Afghani news site, draws this story from The Guardian to let us all know just how well we’re doing as we lead Afghanistan down that “short road to democracy”. It appears that our temporary gov’t in Afghanistan isn’t quite ready to hold democratic elections – but we’re pushing them to get on with it.
Why aren’t they ready?
Well, the cynical answer is that they’re scared they’ll lose a fair election. The current government of Afghanistan has, by all reports, been shaping up to be even worse than the Taliban government we displaced. Women are treated worse by a government that pays lip-service to their rights, but whose police force refuses to respond to complaints and has even been implicated in some offenses. The new government displays less respect for human rights, offers its people less police protection, and – unlike the Taliban – doesn’t really feel like cracking down on the growing of illegal drugs inside Afghanistan’s borders.
However, they do have a grocery list of valid reasons for not holding elections, as well. For starters, the civil government in Kabul is – so far – the civil government of Kabul. Their governing power doesn’t reach far out into Afghanistan, where you’ll find the people are still under the rule of various warlords and gun-toting father figures. All of which makes enforcing the outcome of an election a very tricky business. Add to this the fact that Afghanistan no longer has what one would usually refer to as a “technological infrastructure” (as Robin Williams put it, “You can’t bomb Afghanistan into the stone age, because they’ll all look out and say, ‘Oo! Upgrade!’”) and that the geography of Afghanistan is particularly unforgiving, and it becomes nearly impossible to have the type of accurate, immediate elections that we’re used to seeing < /sarcasm>.
Of course, the U.S. and Britain have a great reason, too.
They told everybody they’d be finished by now.
That’s why Jack Straw (winner, “Most English Name” – 2003) is over in Kabul, pressuring the Afghani government to get on with it and get people to cast their ballots. Right now. This instant. As in: We can worry about the results later, just get it done.
So the road to democracy in Afghanistan is turning out to be long and hard. But at least we’re making progress in Iraq, right?
I have to say that as a peacenik, red-loving, loony-lib, hippie piece of scum, even I saw this one coming. The New York Times points out in this story that the Coalition forces in Iraq are currently being blamed for every violent act that occurs to Iraqi people – whether or not there’s any evidence to support such a claim. In this case, Coalition soldiers are being blamed for an explosion at a mosque. An explosion they insist they had nothing to do with.
“Americans want to prevent the sounds of prayer in the mosque,” [Jasim Bedauwi, 45, a lawyer] said, his face red with heat and agitation, his clothing drenched with sweat. “This is like stripping Islam from here.”
I hate to say “I told you so”. Well, actually, I love to say it. I told you so.
Regardless of what our reasons may have been (freedom, justice, revenge, oil), it was obvious all along that people would see this as America trying to steamroll a culture into oblivion. That is, after all, what supposedly touched off Osama in the first place, and has been a major sticking point with Saddam. Both accused the U.S. of wanting to destroy the Islamic culture.
Can you say “Quagmire”, boys and girls?
And with George Dubya sitting at the top singing “God on our side” as he rolled the tanks right over peace protests, international uproar, and the protests of the U.N., it’s not that hard to see why people would think that.
And now the administration is telling us that our commitment in Iraq (“Don’t worry about your dads, kids – we only need them for a month or so”) is likely to stretch out for at least five years.
Does anybody else think it’s quite a coincidence that that’s exactly how long Dubya will be in office if he manages to take a second election?