[news] Bush's Iraq: an appointocracy

[ron]

i hoope i didn't forward this already.

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From: shniad at sfu.ca

Globe and Mail	   Thursday, January 22, 2004 - Page A19	

Bush's Iraq: an appointocracy

Washington wants carefully selected groups to do its bidding. Iraqis
marching in the streets want the vote

By Naomi Klein

'The people of Iraq are free," declared U.S. President George W. Bush in
Tuesday's 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."

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 on Friday 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, Mr. Bremer said he had
no "fundamental disagreement with him."

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."

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 -- your basic, imperfect, representative democracy.

Mr. 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."

Got that? Iraqi sovereignty will be established by appointees appointing
appointees to select appointees to select appointees. Add to that the fact
that Mr. Bremer was appointed to his post by President Bush and that Mr.
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.

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, Mr. Bush will reply that the occupation is over, we're
on our way out.

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 Sept. 19, Mr. Bremer
pushed through a package of sweeping economic reforms that The Economist
described as a "capitalist dream."

But the dream, though still alive, is now in peril. A growing number of
legal experts are challenging the legitimacy of Mr. Bremer's reforms,
arguing that under the international laws that govern occupying powers --
the Hague Regulations of 1907 and the 1949 Geneva Conventions -- the CPA can
only act as a caretaker of Iraq's economic assets, not as its auctioneer.
Radical changes such as Mr. 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.

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. Mr. 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.

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 Mr. Bremer's privatization project, opting instead to protect local
jobs. And that frightening prospect -- far more than the absence of a census
-- explains why the White House is fighting so hard for its appointocracy.

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 Dec. 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 Mr. 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.

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?

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 earlier this month,
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 Mr. Bremer's shock therapy appears to
have jolted tens of thousands into action.

Their courage deserves our support. Last week, 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.

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 -- and the rising voices are chanting, "No,
no U.S.A. Yes, yes elections."

Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and Fences and Windows

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040122/CONAOMI
22/Columnists/Idx

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