- "The people of Iraq are free," declared U.S.
President George W. Bush in the recent State of the Union address. The
day before, 100,000 Iraqis begged to differ. They took to the streets of
Baghdad shouting "Yes, yes to elections. No, no to selection."
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- According to Iraq occupation chief Paul Bremer, there
really is no difference between the White House's version of freedom, and
the one being demanded on the street. Asked last week whether his plan
to form an Iraqi government through appointed caucuses was headed toward
a clash with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani's call for direct elections, Bremer
said he had no "fundamental disagreement with him."
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- It was, he said, a mere quibble over details. "I
don't want to go into the technical details of refinements. There are,
if you talk to experts in these matters, all kinds of ways to organize
partial elections and caucuses. And I'm not an election expert, so I don't
want to go into the details. But we've always said we're willing to consider
refinements."
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- I'm not an election expert either, but I'm pretty sure
there are differences here than cannot be refined. Ayatollah al-Sistani's
supporters want every Iraqi to have a vote, and for the people they elect
to write the laws of the country ó your basic, imperfect, representative
democracy.
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- Bremer wants his Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)
to appoint the members of 18 regional organizing committees. The committees
will then select delegates to form 18 selection caucuses. These selected
delegates will then further select representatives to a transitional national
assembly. The assembly will have an internal vote to select an executive
and ministers who will form the new government of Iraq. That, Bush said
in his address, constitutes "a transition to full Iraqi sovereignty."
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- Got that? Iraqi sovereignty will be established by appointees
appointing appointees to select appointees to select appointees. Add to
that the fact that Bremer was appointed to his post by President Bush and
that Bush was appointed to his by the U.S. Supreme Court, and you have
the glorious new democratic tradition of the appointocracy: rule by appointee's
appointee's appointees' appointees' appointees' selectees.
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- The White House insists that its aversion to elections
is purely practical: there just isn't time to pull them off before the
June 30 deadline. So why have the deadline? The most common explanation
is that Bush needs "a braggable" on the campaign trail: When
his Democratic rival raises the spectre of Vietnam, Bush will reply that
the occupation is over, we're on our way out.
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- Except that the United States has absolutely no intention
of actually getting out of Iraq. It wants its troops to remain, and it
wants Bechtel, MCI and Halliburton to stay behind and run the water system,
the phones and the oil fields. It was with this goal in mind that, on September
19, Bremer pushed through a package of sweeping economic reforms that The
Economist described as a "capitalist dream."
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- But the dream, though still alive, is now in peril. A
growing number of legal experts are challenging the legitimacy of Bremer's
reforms, arguing that under the international laws that govern occupying
powers ó the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the 1949 Geneva Conventions
ó the CPA can only act as a caretaker of Iraq's economic assets,
not as its auctioneer. Radical changes such as Bremer's Order 39, which
opened up Iraqi industry to 100 per cent foreign ownership, violate these
laws and could therefore be easily overturned by a sovereign Iraqi government.
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- That prospect has foreign investors seriously spooked,
and many are opting not to go into Iraq. The major private insurance brokers
are also sitting it out, having assessed Iraq as too great an expropriation
risk. Bremer has responded by quietly cancelling his announced plan to
privatize Iraq's 200 state firms, instead putting up 35 companies for lease
(with a later option to buy). For the White House, the only way for its
grand economic plan to continue is for its military occupation to end:
only a sovereign Iraqi government, unbound by the Hague and Geneva Regulations,
can legally sell off Iraq's assets.
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- But will it? Given the widespread perception that the
United States is not out to rebuild Iraq but to loot it, if Iraqis were
given the chance to vote tomorrow, they could well immediately decide to
expel U.S. troops and to reverse Bremer's privatization project, opting
instead to protect local jobs. And that frightening prospect ó far
more than the absence of a census ó explains why the White House
is fighting so hard for its appointocracy.
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- Under the current U.S. plan for Iraq, the transitional
national assembly would hold onto power from June 30 until general elections
are held no later than December 31, 2005. That's 17 leisurely months for
a non-elected government to do what the CPA could not legally do on its
own: invite U.S. troops to stay indefinitely and turn Bremer's capitalist
dream into binding law. Only after these key decisions have been made will
Iraqis be invited to have their say. The White House calls this self-rule.
It is, in fact, the very definition of outside-rule, occupation through
outsourcing.
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- That means that the world is once again facing a choice
about Iraq. Will its democracy emerge stillborn, with foreign troops dug
in on its territory, multinationals locked into multiyear contracts controlling
key resources, and an entrenched economic program that has already left
60-70 per cent of the population unemployed? Or will its democracy be born
with its heart still beating, capable of building the country Iraqis choose?
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- On one side are the occupation forces. On the other are
growing movements demanding economic and voter rights in Iraq. Increasingly,
occupying forces are responding to these movements by using fatal force
to break up demonstrations, as British soldiers did in Amarah in early
January, killing six. Yes, there are religious fundamentalists and Saddam
loyalists capitalizing on the rage in Iraq, but the very existence of these
pro-democracy movements is itself a kind of miracle: After 30 years of
dictatorship, war, sanctions and, now, occupation, it would certainly be
understandable if Iraqis met further hardships with fatalism and resignation.
Instead, the violence of Bremer's shock therapy appears to have jolted
tens of thousands into action.
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- Their courage deserves our support. At the World Social
Forum in Mumbai, India, author and activist Arundhati Roy called on the
global forces that opposed the Iraq war to "become the global resistance
to the occupation." She suggested choosing "two of the major
corporations that are profiting from the destruction of Iraq" and
targeting them for boycotts and civil disobedience.
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- In his State of the Union address, President Bush said,
"I believe that God has planted in every heart the desire to live
in freedom. And even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades,
it will rise again." He is being proven right in Iraq every day ó
and the rising voices are chanting, "No, no U.S.A. Yes, yes elections."
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- - Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and
Windows. She is also a columnist with The Globe and Mail where this article
originally appeared.
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- Copyright © 2001-2004 the authors
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- http://www.rabble.ca/columnists_full.shtml?x=29998
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