July 19, 2008 at 10:40:44

Barack Obama Redefines the "Center" of our Nation's Defense Against Terror

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By Ron Fullwood (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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It's a no-brainer for most Americans, steeped in the broad history and tradition of our own democracy, that one election held years ago under the supervision of the U.S. military -- which invaded and overthrew the existing regime -- is no substitute for the checks and balances an accountable government provides by enabling a continuing process where average citizens can actually participate and influence their rulers and their elevated edicts.

There is no democratic process of accountability of the new regime to the Iraqis they intend to govern. Indeed, there has been a sustained effort to intimidate and stifle the influence of those communities who have actively opposed the imposition of the Maliki authority and the new regime's support for the U.S. invaders. Along with their U.S. benefactors, the Maliki regime has directed their new army to assist the U.S. military in re-occupying these opposition communities to intimidate them from their active opposition of the new government's political initiatives and actions.

It's ludicrous -- for most Americans and most Iraqis -- that there's an expectation that the Iraqi regime would engineer some legislative machinations behind the intimidating influence of our occupying army and call it democracy. Yet, that's what Bush and the supporters of his bloody occupation are telling us they expect to achieve from this deadly escalation; a political victory in Iraq's compromised legislature.

It's no matter to Bush and his cabal that the Sadr coalition, who enabled the new regime to power with their support for the Maliki regime -- walked away from their positions within the new parliament to oppose the U.S. enabled regime; they'll just appoint more compliant ones. It's of no consequence to those who are zealously packing our soldiers into the middle of Iraq's civil war that there is no reliable effort from the new regime to bend to the will of the Iraqis they lord over in the majority's insistence that our forces leave their country.

In fact, the Bush administration's support for the continuation of the manufactured authority of the Maliki regime -- in the face of the continuing resistance and opposition to Bush's continued occupation -- is a direct reflection with the president's spurring of the will of the majority of Americans that he end the fiasco and exit.

The most pernicious ignorance of the will of those Bush seeks to dominate with his manufactured authority here at home and in Iraq has to be his continuing insistence that the 'Iraqi al-Qaeda' he's motivated with his diversion from the hunt for the original perpetrators in Afghanistan, threaten more than his pathetic attempts to consolidate power in Iraq. The notion that they'd 'follow us home' is nothing more than Bush's own paranoid fear of the backlash of his own indiscriminate aggression against innocent Iraqis.

Bush's 'Iraqi al-Qaeda' are becoming as important and elevated as the original 9-11 orchestrators have been as a result of his rhetoric raising the combatants to a level of importance reserved for nation-states which actually threaten our defenses with substantial armies and weaponry. While the original al-Qaeda continue to influence recruits and supporters by the mere fact of their Bush-enabled freedom from prosecution, Bush is satisfied to regard the 2% or so Iraqis our intelligence agencies identify as al-Qaeda sympathizers as the most important threat our country faces which deserves the bulk of our nation's defenses and the continuing and escalated sacrifice of our nation's defenders in Iraq.

It should be clear to most everyone by now that Bush has absolutely no intention of doing anything the American people have demanded of him -- and his would-be republican successor holds the same opportunistic reticence. After his veto of the last Iraq withdrawal legislation passed by Congress, Bush took pains to explain the reasons for his obstinacy which centered almost exclusively on Iraqi concerns instead of any overriding American interest. Apparently, the political success of the regime installed and maintained behind the sacrifices of our soldiers is more important to Bush and McCain than anything the American people are telling them with their votes last November, and more important than their response to almost every poll they've answered insisting that he bring our troops home.

While the real al-Qaeda 'threat' to America still looms somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan - emboldened and empowered by their freedom from prosecution resulting from the attention Bush is giving to the Iraqi pretenders -- the president is satisfied with creating and posturing against even more "enemies," over there, in Iraq, that he says would threaten us here at home.

We're not far at all from having to address a world of 'al-Qaeda' wannabes assuming they'll be as successful in antagonizing America as the 9-11 specters Bush and his partners have so recklessly elevated. That's exactly what the American people and the legislators they elected to office have been warning against. Those are precisely the warnings that Bush and his republican cohort, John McCain are determined to ignore as they push our troops even further toward provoking Iraqis and others into even more attacks on our troops; on our allies,and our interests at home and abroad as he picks a fight against a world of 'enemies' who would resist these republican militarists swaggering advance and their bloody expansionism waged behind the sacrifices of our nation's defenders.

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Ron Fullwood, is an activist from Columbia, Md. and the author of the book 'Power of Mischief' : Military Industry Executives are Making Bush Policy and the Country is Paying the Price

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