You call that Democracy?
Glenn Greenwald does an excellent job of summarizing some of the recent opinions published by our President's administration. While our President is on a tour about the country try to convince us all that Iraq is actually progressing just fine, telling us that 'Democracy' is the One True Way, he is slowly perverting our own version of democracy here at home. Forget that we aren't a Democracy at the national level (we are a Republic). Forget that a Democracy just electing a 'terrorist' group to power in Palestine. If you were to believe our President, Democracy in Iraq will solve everything! Ignore the fact that we still haven't succeed in establishing a strong democratic government in Afghanistan and that the Taliban is regaining power there. Instead be proud that we restored public utilities to a small city somewhere in Iraq.
The US has had troops and contractors rebuilding Iraq for 3 years now. We don't have the oil wells back to their pre-war levels. We apparently can't even restore basic utilities to the pre-war levels either. This is what it means to be 'liberated'?
I do sympathize with our President on one thing. Having gotten where we are, what do you do? It is interesting to see how differently our President handles these repeated failures versus what happens in the corporate world. Microsoft has had a string of failures, delays, and setbacks over the last few years. What does it do? A significant shake-up at the top, is what they do! What has our administration done? As far as I can tell, they haven't significantly changed anything except their talking points. If our government was a publicly held company (which is kind of like a Democracy of it's shareholders... if you squint and tilt your head awkwardly) the shareholders and board would be demanding change.
We the people should demand change. Either the administration needs to demonstrate that it really takes it's failures seriously and is doing something about them, or there should be action in the streets. This is larger than pro-life vs pro-choice. This is about the future of our nation. The President uses the US as an exemplar of democracy, so we should demonstrate what it really means to be a democracy and what we expect of our democratically elected leaders.
The US has had troops and contractors rebuilding Iraq for 3 years now. We don't have the oil wells back to their pre-war levels. We apparently can't even restore basic utilities to the pre-war levels either. This is what it means to be 'liberated'?
I do sympathize with our President on one thing. Having gotten where we are, what do you do? It is interesting to see how differently our President handles these repeated failures versus what happens in the corporate world. Microsoft has had a string of failures, delays, and setbacks over the last few years. What does it do? A significant shake-up at the top, is what they do! What has our administration done? As far as I can tell, they haven't significantly changed anything except their talking points. If our government was a publicly held company (which is kind of like a Democracy of it's shareholders... if you squint and tilt your head awkwardly) the shareholders and board would be demanding change.
We the people should demand change. Either the administration needs to demonstrate that it really takes it's failures seriously and is doing something about them, or there should be action in the streets. This is larger than pro-life vs pro-choice. This is about the future of our nation. The President uses the US as an exemplar of democracy, so we should demonstrate what it really means to be a democracy and what we expect of our democratically elected leaders.
posted by derek at 3:25 PM
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