Junta Matrix: Reloaded
The only way to react to this news in this mornings New York Times is in your best Keanu Reeves voice: "Whoa." Let's recount the first Matrix movie's pivotal premise: The red pill will answer the question "what is the Matrix?" (By removing you from it) and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before. As Bush tries hard to force-feed the rest of the world his blue pill, watch as the Arab world and especially, the Iraqi population, swallow the red pills in gulping handfuls. The American electorate's belief in that "5 point" plan is, of course, wholly contingent on us swallowing that blue pill as he tries to convince the rest of the world the Iraqi's are really going to be "running things." As the article in the NY Times below demonstrates, the two reporters in question seem to have taken the red pill. Not only is the new Iraqi "Premier" a US hand picked lackey, as reported by the Times, he's a CIA funded leader of an exile group:
[...]
"UNITED NATIONS, May 28 -- After turning to the United Nations to shore up its failing effort to fashion a new government in Baghdad, the United States ended up Friday with a choice for prime minister certain to be seen more as an American candidate than one of the United Nations or the Iraqis themselves.
The man chosen to be Prime Minister, Iyad Alawi, is the secretary general of the Iraqi National Accord, an exile group that has received funds from the Central Intelligence Agency. His ties with the C.I.A., and his closeness to the United States could become an issue in a country where public opinion has grown almost universally hostile to the Americans.
The announcement of Dr. Alawi's selection appeared to surprise several at the United Nations."
Poor Brahimi, doesn't he realize up is down and down is up when dealing with this "administration." My advice to the beleaguered UN Envoy at this point would be to take a red pill and read the Times article found here http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/29/politics/29ASSE.html?hp in the morning.
That red pill is amazing when taken in the proper doses. For instance you realize that Bush is as Bush does. Or to be more precise, like father, like son as pointed out in this excerpt from an essay I am preparing for a blog I contribute to:
[...]
In October of 1989 anti-Noriega elements of the PDF [Panamanian Defense Forces] capture and hold the Panamanian dictator who is then summarily offered to the U.S. military. In an inexplicable moment and monumental act of incompetence where thousands of lives could have been saved, the first Bush refuses their offer. Pro Noriega PDF forces, after a couple of hours, free him. Two months later in December, 1989 the U.S. invades Panama, as detailed in a New York Times article dated 12/22/89, with a resultant government estimated 500 Panamanian civilian deaths (nongovernmental sources put the estimate in the thousands), 3,000 civilian wounded, including tens of thousands left homeless added to 23 American dead, 324 wounded. We find the details, that smacks of a nauseatingly similar post Iraqi invasion policy, of a planned post Noriega Panama in two articles by the LA Times, 6/23/90 and The Nation, 10/3/94. "[...]the original post-invasion plans called for outright US military government, with the head of the US Army Southern command as Panama's de facto ruler. At the last minute a decision is made to install Guillermo Endara as president, but his government is "merely a façade"..... "[...]Endara, one of the two vice presidents, and the attorney general, all have links to drug trafficking and money laundering." Finally, we find a wrap of sorts, of the results and fruit of Bush Sr.'s chest thumping Panamanian adventure from an article in the LA Times, 4/28/91, "[...]Colombian drug cartels and associates of Noriega once again turn Panama into a narcotics transshipment center; there are far more cocaine production facilities than ever existed under Noriega, and drug use in Panama is reportedly at a far higher level."
Coupled with the disappointing results that followed the Panamanian invasion and recent pre-Gulf War #1 history, a disturbing pattern of predictability develops. For one, GWBush had an extraordinary moment laid at his lap when the Allied Coalition Forces, composed under the auspices of the UN, for which he most certainly deserves credit for building, smashed Saddam's army in 1991. Then, predictably, as he did in 10/89, he faltered. Baghdad was ripe for the picking with Saddam representing the golden pear. With an allied force composed of UN and global goodwill and wishes he had a chance to take Saddam out and then immediately withdraw, leaving a Saddam less Iraq on it's own under an umbrella of UN forces to reconstruct and rebuild with a government the UN would have had a hand in. There were already inherent risks in even being in the ME with such a strong Christianized, western presence. Even though ME history forces one to acknowledging that risk, there is no doubt the stench of US regional hegemony would have been heavily sanitized to a much lesser degree than the odious permeation that drips with every move associated with Gulf War #2 and it's aftermath. Notwithstanding the follies of absolutes and certitude, there is a good chance religious ME sensitivities might have been better navigated and the climate less volatile and explosive with a UN mandated interim government in place. It's a good educational guess that untold Iraqi civilian and US military lives would have been saved in the long run and the dynamics of today's ME might have been a little different had Bush, Sr. followed through with the logical conclusion the situation then demanded. Instead we have the same one dimensional and myopic thinking driven by the blunt club of unilateralist military superiority defining a Bush, Jr. foreign policy the world perceives as self-serving at the expense of ME respect and state sovereignty.
Yes, the red pill when taken as prescribed works wonders for historical perspective.
Michael Aiken
...posting from the Bush Banana Republic of Florida