Iraq Is Free, Because Bush Says So
 

January 31 2005
Counterbias.com
by Brian Adler
 

"Iraq is free, because I said so."

George W. Bush has not actually used these words, but he may as well have. We live in fascinating times. Our world is changing faster than many realize or believe possible. It is a world in which up is down, south is north, and the lines between democracy and autocracy, and freedom and totalitarianism are becoming hopelessly blurred.

In order to defend itself from Terror, the United States invades a country. The invaded nation is so dangerous to the Planet's greatest superpower that it falls in a matter of weeks. The war is a war of liberation. Oil fields and construction contracts are indeed quickly liberated. So too, is a considerable amount of Iraqi land--the parts that will comprise America's fourteen new military bases. Monstrous officials with names like Hussein and Aziz are replaced by entities far more friendly. They bear catchy monikers like Kellogg, Brown and Root, and CPA.  

And then came George W. Bush's first great triumph: the creation of a fully independent, democratic Iraq. I can still see the smile on the American President's face as he leaned over toward Tony Blair to tell him the wonderful news. Incredible, isn't it?  Against seemingly impossible odds, the Allies had decreed that a handful of returned Iraqi émigrés had set up a sovereign government of the people and for the people. Iraq was free!

It reminds me of American History and the Revolutionary War. Remember? Back when a bunch of Patriots who'd spent the past twenty years hanging around the French king's court came back to their homeland on the points of Gallic bayonets. America's natural rulers, they took over the new nation, ensconcing themselves inside a great big fortress that Lafayette had just completed somewhere on the Potomac. It was a sight! The high walls bristling with French cannon. The fleur-de-lys banner snapping in the breeze. The mansard roofs of the brand new Académie Americaine. Our country's new rulers setting about the work of establishing a native government with the kindly help of several regiments of His Majesty's Guards. 

Remember too, how men called Jefferson and Adams and Washington accepted the universal wisdom of offering a throne to one of Louis XVI's cousins, the Duc de -- I forget his name now. Back then, we Americans knew that, having been liberated through the might of France, we were now entirely subject to that great country's will. If you are stronger, you must know better. And philosophically and theologically speaking, God's will is always made known through the most powerful military. Our new government, and our new society, must necessarily have represented a set of inalienable rights and freedoms. Everything was C'est si bon! Why? Because the French said so!

What? You don't remember this version of American History? I am very surprised. Perhaps you have not listened to President Bush's latest speech, the one that declares this story to be history. Everyone knows that the United States of America acts only in the best interests of all humankind. When we go out into the world, and say, invade a country, we are only bringing to that land, and that people, the same marvelous freedoms that our own revolution once brought to us. We are only repeating the natural history of the human race. Freedom is an inalienable right. Freedom is inevitable.

But, what is that you say? That not only did these things never happen, but it would have been very wrong of the French to even think of doing something like that! Bien sûr! That's probably why they never happened. Our revolution wouldn't have been worth all that much if we'd merely exchanged one foreign ruler, and one un-American set of customs for another.  It would have been a French Revolution rather than an American. So, why is George W. Bush insisting that the elections now being held in Iraq are symbols of that countries freedom? Why are these races in which candidates are too afraid to even campaign, spoken of as if they were the most sublime expressions of newfound Iraqi liberty and dignity? Why is American democracy being imposed by force? Why are American ideas being imposed on another people? Is self-determination not the truest test of liberty? Why under conditions like these should anyone--especially the Iraqis themselves--consider themselves to be free?

Why? Because Bush says so! And in the brave new world of American Anti-Terror Diplomacy, his voice is the only one that counts. The world is become a democracy of one. And you are always right--when you are the only one with a vote.

Brian Adler is a freelance writer and history buff.  He writes non-fiction essays, as well short stories and screenplays.

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