Truly Arab Views

[Tamiati]

I just got this commentary from Aljazeera, we here at DU are not the only ones who are talking about the real strategy.......

This does not bode well for GWB's endeavors either
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/967715B8-276C-4708-AC08-7FD102E13BA7.htm
IN PURSUIT OF ARAB REFORM
A strategy, but not one for freedom
By Rahul Mahajan
Tuesday 18 May 2004, 13:34 Makka Time, 10:34 GMT

While Iraqis reject the occupation, and George Bush's administration admits that even after 30 June Iraq will have only "limited sovereignty", there has been little change in the widespread supposition that the US is there to bring democracy to Iraq.
Democratising Iraq is supposedly just the core of a larger plan, wrought by the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, for transformation of the entire Middle East.

The Bush administration, in everything from its assault on civil liberties to its cult of official secrecy and executive privilege, is at least the most anti-democratic presidency since Richard Nixon.
Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, and Dick Cheney seem to believe in force as not only the essence of politics but its entirety. Pipes is an Islamophobic bigot and Bush is a fundamentalist Christian who constantly talks about his "crusade" in the Middle East.

In Afghanistan, when the US-convened Loya Jirga was all but certain to return a result the US didn't want (election of Zahir Shah as interim president), the US shut down the meeting and pressured Shah to resign, then presenting the Jirga with its pre-picked Hamid Karzai as a fait accompli.

When the Iraqi opposition groups meeting under US auspices in April and May of last year proved too intractable, Paul Bremer decided to forgo elections and appoint a governing council.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

Rahul Mahajan
Edited for one more important link:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EB331031-8AD1-47BD-9046-A71F0902B2EF.htm

[scarletwoman]

1. You need to post a link, and cut excerpt to 4 paragraphs...

See DU posting rules.

Here's a link to Rahul Mahajan's excellent blog: http://empirenotes.org/ -- which I consider to be required reading for keeping well-informed.

sw

[Tamiati]

3. Edited

Ok, I edited alot of it...but feel that alot is so important that I may have, yes failed to follow the DU post rules :( Apologies for that (PLZ...I've seen others)

Included the link for the WHOLE story

[Karenina]

4. Hey sw!!!!

:hi: :loveya: :hi:

[scarletwoman]

5. Oh wow!

Great to see you're still around! :hi: :hug:

sw

[NMDemDist2]

2. ouch, the truth hurts doesn't it?

glad to see some truth being reported somewhere about these imperial notions of the neocons

[Moderator]

6. Tamiati

Per DU copyright rules
please post only four
paragraphs from the
copyrighted news source.


Thank you.


DU Moderator