You can add "elections" to the list of Middle East lies in the SOTUS, along with
"75% reduction in US dependence on Arab oil," and
"increasing research on energy alternatives."
Juan Cole's site was down for a while yesterday, without any explanation. A number of you may have missed his take on SOTUS. He took on Bush's claims about "spreading freedom," specifically about elections in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Egypt. Bush made these an-historical statements in the SOTUS:
we are writing a new chapter in the story of self-government, with women lining up to vote in Afghanistan, and millions of Iraqis marking their liberty with purple ink, and men and women from Lebanon to Egypt debating the rights of individuals and the necessity of freedom . . .'
Not quite, dubya. you must have been hung over in World History class.
MORE BELOW
Cole points out that:
elections in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lebanon and Egypt are not a "new chapter." They've had parliamentary elections before. Lebanon has been having them for decades, and they've often been pretty representative. In Iraq and Afghanistan foreign interference had a lot to do with the rise of subsequent dictatorships. This idea that the Middle East is a blank slate that never knew what a parliament was before Bush and Cheney showed up is insulting. And, calling the government set up under imperial auspices after an illegal invasion "self-government" is laughable.
so much for ancient history; on to recent events:
...the elections that Bush trumpets in all four countries, and in Palestine, which he did not mention in this regard, were rebukes to Bush, not affirmations of him. The Afghans elected warlords, the Iraqis put in the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Muqtada al-Sadr's people (the ones who killed Cindy Sheehan's son) along with the Iraqi Muslim Brotherhood and some Baathists. The Shiite parties of Hizbullah and Amal have new weight in Lebanon. The fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt got 88 seats, an unprecedentedly large number.
These elections were Middle Eastern referendums on Bush, and he lost every one hands down. Bush's main accomplishment in the Middle East since 9/11 has been to strengthen Muslim fundamentalist parties everywhere in the region.
And Cole doesn't even touch on the elections in Iran, where Bush's "axis of evil" label has incited perhaps the most dangerous backlash.
Sidney Blumenthal paints a pathetic picture of the blowback effects of Bush's rhetorical efforts to maintain a heroic self image:
With every phrase, Bush achieves the polar opposite of what he claims to intend. His orotund rhetoric about "freedom on the march," "democracy," "tyranny," and "evil" undermines itself. What happens when "democracy" does not advance democracy and "freedom" is used to oppress? Bush's refusal to accept paradox, that his good motives may have unintended consequences, leads him to reject "hindsight." "Far from being a hopeless dream, the advance of freedom is the great story of our time," Bush said in his speech. Rather than reassess his own actions that have made his goals ever more distant -- "second-guessing" -- he clings to his self-image as a warrior-savior. But Bush may have become such a universally tainted figure that almost anything he says, especially in the language of idealism, is now discredited.
While required by law, the SOTUS has turned into an insulting bag of lies, propaganda, generalizations and over-simplifications, inane protocol, staged pieces, applause lines and in general a mockery of historical and scientific fact, truth and the democratic process. Debunking the whoppers leaves almost nothing but vacuous whimsy. I didn't watch it this year, for the first time, and I certainly never will again while Bush and Rove are in the White House. They live in a parallel universe of smoke, mirrors, and untruth which is both offensive and tolerated, and even encouraged by hundreds of interruptions for meaningless and emptyheaded applause. Why freakin bother?