The defeat of Bush
war-agenda loyalist, Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Conn), provisionally signals the
public's disengagement with the faux "democracy" projects of the Bush
administration's warmongering in West Asia.
It seems that the
American public has lost its appetite for ramming the poisonous and
blood-soaked "democracy" pill down the throats of the rebellious
masses of the region through the therapy of blitzkriegs and aerial shock and
awe. According to the March 2006 Confidence
in US Foreign Policy Index, conducted for Foreign Affairs, the US establishment's
most influential journal on the topic, 58 percent of the American public say
that "democracy [is] something that countries only come to when they're
ready for it."
Now, this
elementary insight into the nature of democracy is nothing short of genius in a
people abused by a massive propaganda machine that touts incessantly the claims
that the Bush administration's foreign policy is ardently devoted to promoting
democracy in Iraq and throughout West Asia as a major goal while, in reality,
it dismembers nations, installs theocracies, helps to enslave women, steals
national assets, reaps obscene corporate profits, subverts democracy at home,
steals from the treasury to enrich cronies, incites hatred of the land, and
helps to foment the next (and this time genuine) terrorist attack against its
exposed citizens.
Americans, it
seems, are not as stupid as its leaders would wish. The Foreign Affairs poll
indicates that 73 percent of us worry that US actions in West Asia are aiding
the recruitment of terrorists.
Moreover,"in
just a few months" (that was in March) "public concern over oil
prices and their impact on national security have gone from 0 to 60." Six
in 10 people also believe that improving intelligence operations and becoming
less dependent on foreign energy supplies would enhance US security "a
great deal." Pressed a little further (but Foreign Affairs can draw its
own conclusions), the public might say that US foreign policy needs to change
course. Does this sound like Americans are stupid? Or that their leaders have
other plans than the security of the people?
Not that the
Foreign Affairs poll had been widely reported.
No, instead, we
were told almost jubilantly a few weeks ago by our contemptible and
contemptuous media that a poll had found that the majority of Americans still
believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction -- hahaha! I'm sure
we all thought individually, "Who are these imbeciles?" And, I think,
that was how we were intended to react -- with contempt for the people and
ourselves for belonging to them.
So long as the
individual American believes he/she is in the minority of public opinion, the
fact that Bush's foreign policy is profoundly resented can be successfully
hidden and, for a while, neutralized. We will continue to think that voting for
the illusory "lesser evil" is all the options we have, lacking any
evidence that we actually are a majority "we" who could form an
oppositional party that would reflect our actual unity, solidarity, and commitment
on basic issues such as peace, human rights, respect for international law,
social justice, and real (and not just electoral) democracy -- issues that poll
after poll show we systematically support.
It is my belief
that Israel's current proxy war in Lebanon for the US is dictated by this
knowledge that in just one year, the American public has begun to rethink the
fandango of the "war on terror" for the murderous freak show that it
really is. After all, if Israel is now fighting "terror" in Lebanon
why couldn't the US initiate it, the self-appointed #1 crusader against the
"axis of evil" in the whole world? Because, among other important
reasons (including the plan to provoke Syria and Iran into hostilities -- a
task to which Israel is eminently better suited "diplomatically"
speaking than the US), the US population would not buy it, that's why.
Foreign Affairs is
not an organ the US public readily accesses to determine what its government is
up to. Rather, it is what the ruling elite read and discuss among themselves.
You will not find there any crude and rabid diatribes by media buffoons and
Bush court jesters such as Rush Limbaughs, Ann Coulters, or other barking-mad
illusionists' whose demagoguery is peddled to the allegedly enraptured
patriotic masses without portfolios in the stock market. For them is reserved
the inconsequential low-burlesque and media mock-epics of the "honor"
of flags, "sanctity" of marriage, prayer in the schools, and the
depravity and cowardice of the nonexistent "left" -- issues that do
not put bread on the table, fill the gas tank, pay the doctor, or secure a
child's employable education.
Foreign Affairs, as
the forum of the rulers, has other things to think about -- like how to
reproduce the privileges and profitability of the economic status quo and
existing order. Accordingly, it obsessively studies us -- the bankrollers,
cannon fodder, and potential obstructionist to their goals of economic
inequality and social injustice -- with justifiably preoccupied and studious
attention, much the way men used to study women in the days before women
asserted their right to be treated as human beings and to be permitted the
courtesy of studying themselves.
The establishment
finds that we are not amused, which means that the rulers' agenda to impose American
global economic hegemony through military primacy is in trouble. According to
the Foreign Affairs poll, most of us rank "promoting democracies" as
the least important of our foreign policy goals. This may be because we see
that promoting democracy at home has taken second place to promoting tyranny
through surveillance, through scrapping the constitution by ignoring that
international treaties are the "supreme law of the land," through
corrupt elections, and through curtailment of basic rights. We may wonder just
why we should pay to export something abroad that we decreasingly have less of
at home.
But, in truth, we
are not that selfish. Even while suffering from democracy-deficit at home, we
care about other people. According to the Confidence Index poll, 71 percent of
us would approve our government's efforts to help other countries struck by
national disasters and 70 percent of us want our government to cooperate with
other countries on environmental and disease-control problems.
It is amazing --
and a credit to us -- that we have managed to hold on to this much of our
humanity as our fearless leader shows so little. As Lebanon crumbles under his
ally's bombs, the commander-in-chief is reported exuberantly bike-riding on his
fake ranch in Texas, going down steep hills shouting, "Here comes an air
raid!" Even as the amoral cretin rides again, it is comforting to know
that most of us no longer ride with him.
Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at
Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at lbohne@edinboro.edu.