The US has worked continuously to maintain a tyrannous swamp in the Middle East since WW2 (while rhetorically being for democracy); the left have always argued against these policies.

Currently the pseudo-left argues against the new policies of ‘draining the swamp’ and genuinely getting behind the revolutionary struggle for bourgeois democracy and pretends that the US ruling elite have not reversed the rotten policies that led to 9/11, but are carrying-on as ever. (installing puppets and stealing oil etc.)

Yet even the pseudo-left can see that the US foreign policy establishment are furious that their life’s work has been junked and they are opposing these new policies from an openly rightwing standpoint. Where will it all end is their great worry. How can we put Humpty Dumpty together again they wonder.

Well as the effort to undo the damage of sixty years of rotten policy in Iraq is demonstrating, even when they are on the side of vast majority of the Iraqi peoples', the effort is enormous. To try to hold the people's struggles back anywhere would now (forty years after the Vietnamese showed how diminished imperialism is) be ridiculous.

Thus they shout a lot at Iran while having no capacity to go to war with them. Even with the Iranian ruling theocrats hated by their own people the only possible way of them avoiding being overthrown by their own people is if the US launched a war against them. Iran will be liberated by the Iranian masses observing the freedoms enjoyed by their Iraqi neighbors.

The pseudo-left is laughable. Iraq is seen by them as a disaster and last year's elections are ignored; GWB is seen as having led the US into a quagmire; peculiar comparisons are made with the Vietnam war, where the US were determined to prevent elections because they knew that the communists would win and Iraq where they fostered elections that would obviously bring to power political parties that are Iraq’s equivalent of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

The policy of keeping Saddam in power is held up as progressive. Give me a break.

BD,
I can't speak for the rest of my gang but the reason I "singled out" the CIA is because in this topic, it's their over the years that are partly responsible for the mess we are in today.

They have created more despotic regimes that have cost more lives of innocents than any covert other group I can name, and they don't do it for National Security - it's done primarily to create new economic opportunities for business.

As well as their involvement in the overthrow of democratically elected governments they've been involved in arms deals and drug running to raise funds as well as numerous political assassinations. They fund and promote international terrorist groups when required. The end always justifies the means.

While all countries may have covert groups, none even come close to having the influence or history of the CIA (except perhaps Mossad over the last few decades).

You also seem to use the same logical arguments as our politicians.
It's OK if we torture 100 for example, as long as they torture 101. That obviously makes us better than them.

Oh, and the reason that there is not likely to be any "Christian governments" real soon is that government is all about compromise while theocracy, by definition, does not permit it.
It's historically better for fundamentalist groups to remain anonymous and stay behind the scenes where they don't have to answer difficult public questions, although there has been an obvious drift toward it in the West lately, as a way to promote self-righteousness in what is portrayed as a religious war. Theocracy has worked so very well for Iran, just as the Inquisition did for Europe in the past.

The unexpected swipe at multiculturalism is also interesting. I wonder if heaven is divided into distinct racial or cultural areas or will we all have to agree to abide by identical values.

Perhaps if the Jews all assimilated and dressed and behaved as their Roman rulers did a couple of thousand years ago, things would have been much better for us all today.

Rache,

I don't buy that the CIA orchestrated Saddam's rise to power, there is a lot more to it than that, but I do completely agree that the CIA does do this around the world, in particular, in South America.

I would say to that such actions are neccessary where they do happen.

Throwing out all the politics for a moment, let's look at nations the "evil Americans" have occupied:

Japan & Germany after WWII, both on their knees after their aggressive takeover bid, both subdued by a superior force. Why did the US allow Japan and Germany to get up?

Japan today is what Iraq, if all the intolerant bigots there got over their tribalism, could become. Do you not see the logic in wanting a world where every nation is open and democratic, in the western sense?

I know that you may argue that the US stops democracy, as it did in Chile by killing a democratically elected communist leader, but again, I say that is totally acceptable.

Despite the rabid leftists like Phillip Adams admirality for such a system, would such deceiving people actually live in Cuba, Soviet Russia, East Germany?

I believe that the western world has a mandate, that given all human traffic flows desire to live in the open, tolerant west, that we have a right to shape the world into our type of society.

One can see the obvious failures of not doing this, with North Korea. Contrast the North with the South (where the "evil US" went) and you will see, if your open to it, there is no choice but western style democracy.

I say western style because we've seen in Palestine, a terrorist organisation voted in democratically. This couldn't happen in a state that didn't control the media, the people's minds, as they have been bred to be so racist they believe all their ills are the wests fault, even though it is we, only we, not Arab govt's, that feed them, pay for their police, and so on.

rache

"Perhaps if the Jews all assimilated and dressed and behaved as their Roman rulers did a couple of thousand years ago, things would have been much better for us all today."

Actually most of them did. It was the Roman rulers who copied the Jewish faith. They called it Christianity.

Islam and the occupation of Iraq, Egypt Palestine etc by people from Arabia occured 700 years later. I don't think any of this has anything to do with terrorism or the problems amongst Muslims. We have seen murderous wars between sections of Islam as we did much earlier on between Christians.

In recent times Sudan has seen some of the worst conflict and Israel Jews and Christians are not involved. And there was the Iran/Iraq war.

All of the nations which declare themselves as Islamic have despotic governments and extreme poverty. All have awful human rights records. There is a problem. It matters to us directly because innocent Astralians have been murdered in mass by those who have proclaimed themselves as followers of Islam. I think and hope that they are wrong in taking the name of Mahommet to justify their actions.

But they are there none the less. And when they invade our world it affects us. We need a solution. Short term to stop them killing us and long term to put an end to the horror.

Benjamin,

Saddam's rise to power-
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/217.html
http://www.representativepress.org/CIASaddam.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EL17Ak01.html

Here's a summary of what the CIA have been up to for the last 50 years -
http://www.atrocities.net/

And a couple more -
http://www.betterworldlinks.org/book73e.htm
http://www.neravt.com/left/cia.html

Post-War Germany and Japan had to recover for commercial reasons, if not political. Would you prefer that we continue to pay to support them forever?

Logic,

A quick check of the facts would show you that there are already 15 Muslim democratic nations in the world and not all of them are in extreme poverty.

There were a couple of very big "Murderous Wars", and lots of smaller ones between Christians over the last 100 years - in fact almost all of them.

The situation in Sudan is more an ongoing civil war than a war between states, much like the slaughter in Rwanda during 1994.
(except that Sudan is 70% Muslim while Rwanda is 93% Christian).

Also, what you see as modern democracy is more typically a duopoly or oligarchy. There is a subtle but very significant difference.
Do Western Governments control the media or vice-versa? I don't think either option is a good idea in a "free society".

To the author

Thank you for an interesting and thought provoking article. I have also enjoyed reading all of the posts. I do not know enough about the subject to comment.

Cheers