inside the glass house - Bush visit exposes sham sovereignty in Iraq

Iraq's so-called democracy — and its political sovereignty — is one of the biggest frauds perpetrated on the international community. Bush's stealth visit to Baghdad under cover of darkness was a telling comment on Iraq: a hoax that is being passed off as one of the prime examples of an emerging new democracy in the Middle East.

NEW YORK- Afghanistan and Iraq are two countries run by puppet governments beholden to the United States. The military occupation of both countries — whose governments are protected by US and coalition forces — is starkly obvious to the international community at large.

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai is a quisling collaborating with an occupying force. But he still remains a prisoner in his own presidential palace surrounded by an army of American-trained and American-supplied bodyguards in a country where the domestic insurgency is threatening to escalate.

The US military, which was planning to hand over the country to Western forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), is now having second thoughts, fearing that European and Canadian troops may not succeed in containing a new urban guerrilla warfare involving a growing number of recent suicide attacks and roadside bombings, Iraq-style.

In Iraq, the US has manoeuvred to install a new puppet Prime Minister, Nouri Kamal al-Maliki, who received a surprise visitor in the person of US President George W. Bush who quickly flew in and out of Baghdad last week to shore up support for the new government.

The symbolic gesture was primarily meant as a public relations exercise to boost the morale of not only the new Iraqi government but also the ruling Republican Party in the US which is in danger of losing the upcoming elections in November. The political hot potato at the polls would be America's disastrous military involvement in Iraq, which passed a milestone last week with the US death toll hitting the tragic 2,500 mark.

Compared to Afghanistan, Iraq has a veneer of democracy considering the fact that it elected its legislators — but the elections took place under a tightly-controlled, military-occupied country. The polls in Iraq were no showcase for the principles of Jeffersonian democracy the US proudly preaches overseas.

A sharp observer of the international political scene wrote a letter to the New York Times last week putting the visit in context when he rightly pointed out that Bush's trip was kept a secret even from Prime Minister al-Maliki until the last possible moment. This, he argued, was clearly an "unwitting demonstration of US domination in Iraq."

In what country, the writer asked, could an American president land his plane without the knowledge of that country's leader? Obviously, it could happen only in a country "occupied" by the US military. "Only in a state whose airspace we control. Only in a state without real government autonomy and authority — like Iraq," the writer rightly declared.

Meanwhile, the latest public opinion in 14 countries by the Pew Global Attitudes Project (PGAP) concluded that the Iraq war had made the world "more dangerous" than before the US invasion of that country more than three years ago.

The strongly negative opinions came from 12 of the 14 foreign countries surveyed, with strong pluralities of 44 percent (in Russia and China) to majorities of up to 76 percent (in France). The only exceptions were India and Nigeria where pluralities of 41 percent of respondents said the world had been made "safer" after the US invasion of Iraq.

The large majorities were clear indications that the US image overseas remains tainted both by the war in Iraq and also the global war on terrorism. In 10 of the 14 countries, there was an overwhelming belief that the world had been rendered "more dangerous" by the US invasion.

With the exception of Germany and Japan, the respondents in the rest of the surveyed countries believed that the continued US presence in Iraq constituted a greater danger to world peace than the presumed nuclear ambitions of Iran or North Korea. Surprisingly, respondents in Britain, one of America's closest military allies, rated the US presence in Iraq as a greater danger than Iran by a 41-34 percent margin.

The survey of nearly 17,000 people also included nationals of five predominantly Islamic countries — Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Jordan, and Turkey — along with Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Japan and the US. In France, the percentage with a favourable opinion of the US fell from 63 percent in 2002 to 43 percent in 2003; in Indonesia, it fell from 61 percent to 15 percent; and in Jordan, from 25 percent to just one percent.

The only countries in which the US image appears to have continued to rebound were China (from 42 percent favourable last year to 47 percent) and Pakistan (from 23 percent to 27 percent).