Everything They Say About Promoting Democracy Is,

And Always Has Been, A Damnable Lie       
by Chris Floyd     
"Bandargate," the exploding scandal involving a billion-dollar arms-deal kickback to presidential crony Prince Bandar -- the Saudi poobah dubbed "Bandar Bush" by the president himself for his decades-long intimacy with America's ruling family -- continues to provide telling revelations about the way the world really works.

For instance, buried deep in one of the Guardian's latest stories on the scandal, we find this illuminating passage:

Prince Bandar has spoken himself of his unorthodox methods with cash. He is quoted in a recent biography saying that he personally flew $10m in a suitcase to Rome and gave it to a priest at the Vatican Bank, in order to covertly fund the Christian Democrats against the Communists in the 1983 Italian elections.

He is quoted saying he did this at the request of the Pope, Lady Thatcher and then head of the CIA, Bill Casey. They wanted him to shift the cash so no western fingerprints would be on it.

Of course, America's antipathy to unfettered democracy is well- established in the historical record, but it is always good to get fresh confirmation into public circulation whenever possible -- if only because there are still many people out there who actually believe the bloated, bribe-passing, bribe-taking, bloodstained, money-grubbing elites when they mouth their endless pieties about freedom and democracy. What's worse, even as we speak, there are tens of thousands of people being killed, maimed, despoiled, tortured, tainted, and driven mad for the sake of these lies.

But the historical record doesn't lie, and it is crystal clear on this point: the American Establishment has absolutely no use for genuine democracy at all. They have undermined, submarined, kneecapped, perverted and interfered with elections all over the world (and at home), using everything from bribes and threats to murder and terrorism, in order to procure compliant regimes who will follow Washington's dictates -- and fill the American elite's coffers. "Democracy" is useful to them only as a sham or carefully controlled process to legitimize some favored faction.

If a nation is not compliant with Washington's will -- why, then, it is no longer a legitimate democracy. Venezuela, for example, is often referred to in Establishment circles as a "dictatorship," despite the several open elections won by Hugo Chavez and his coalition -- and despite the fact that Venezuela remains immeasurably freer in every regard than, say, Saudi Arabia.

Which brings us to the second point of the Establishment's true attitude toward democracy: if a regime plays ball with Washington, it doesn't matter in the least how tyrannical and un-democratic it is. Bandar Bush's Saudi Arabia again stands as the prime example of this. Bush will quite literally kiss Saudi leaders on the lips and stroll with them hand-in-hand, and never say a word about the regime's draconian strictures, which give the Taliban a run for their money. Why? Because the Saudis play ball -- and because they enrich the Bush Family and the American elite.  Is there any doubt that if Vladimir Putin cut the Bushes or other Establishment elites in for a juicy slice of Gazprom, he too would find his "democratic"  credentials miraculously restored?

Libya is another good example; Moamar Gadafy, long one of the West's biggest bogeyman, had only to invite Western oil firms back into his country to rejoin the "community of nations" and become a "trusted friend" of such pious Western leaders as Tony Blair.

 

Ethiopia is yet another example: a brutal dictatorship, notorious for torture, now an American-trained, American-funded ally, fighting a proxy war of "regime change" for Bush in Somalia, and taking Bush's "renditioned" Terror War captives into its dungeons for "enchanced interrogation."

The list goes on and on, past, present and future. The bottom line is always: Who will play ball? Who will toe the line? Who will kick back the grease? Who will accept the bases? Who will torture prisoners for us? Who will beggar their own people to buy weapons from our war profiteers? Who will advance the bipartisan agenda of enriching our elites?

This has been Washington's policy for more than a hundred years, although it greatly accelerated with the murder of the Republic and its replacement by the National Security State after World War II. None of these policies -- none of them, not a single one -- has ever had anything at all to do with fostering genuine democracy in other nations.

 

 

 

 

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