LETTER to Sen. Foreign Relations Comm: TEACHING IRAQIS DEMOCRACY

[yurbud]

I mailed this to every member of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, including Republicans. The GOP may not act, but they may pause or fight a little less vigorously for Bush if they feel the public breathing down their neck.

At the bottom of the letter, I've included all of their addresses in case you feel inclined to send this or something similar.


My letter:

Dear Sen,

If we're teaching Iraqis democracy, what do polls say they want?


The Coalition Provisional Authority did a poll of Iraqis on a number of questions and one was whether they view us as liberators or occupiers.

The results were pretty grim:




LINK TO POLL DATA
http://wid.ap.org/documents/iraq/cpapoll_files/frame.htm

A Gallup poll done around the same time was only slightly more supportive of us staying.

The only poll that has shown anywhere near majority support for us being there was from a right wing think tank, that has a vested interest in making this Neocon adventure look good.

The argument that we are fighting terrorists there instead of here assumes there's a set number of people who are mad at us, and we can eventually kill enough of them to make the problem go away.

The problem is, at the base of all of it, is a resentment of our involvement in propping up their dictators, who don't share the oil wealth with their own people. All this gets channeled into religion because they have no effective political outlets in most countries over there. So by intervening militarily, we are making more not less people resent and want to attack us.

Polls of reaction in other Arab countries to our invasion of Iraq confirm this. A Zogby poll in 2003 found that 90% disapproved of our invasion.

“Poll: U.S. unpopular among Arabs over Iraq” By Anwar Iqbal. UPI. March 17, 2003 http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030317-025106-3821r

Zogby's most recent poll of Arab countries shows MORE disapprove with 98% of Egyptians (our allies) disapproving.

“Poll Shows Growing Arab Rancor at U.S.” Dafna Linzer. The Washington Post. Jul 23, 2004. pg. A.26

If you want to teach people democracy, you can't do it with a gun in their face.

Gorbachev accidentally showed us an easier way to do it. He told the dictators of Eastern Europe the Soviets couldn't afford to help them oppress their people anymore. Within a few years, those dictators were out of jobs, and those countries were more or less democracies.

And I don't think a single Russian soldier was killed.

Musharraf, Mubarak, the Saudis, various kings and generals, would all wither away and die without our money and help of our intelligence services. The results might be messy, but the people over there wouldn't blame us for it--they'd thank us.

All of the fairy tales about WMD, terrorist and spreading democracy in Iraq may be fooling a portion of the electorate here, but it is fooling virtually no one in the Arab world where we are supposedly trying to decrease hostility toward the US. They are well aware of the real agenda: to control Iraq’s oil and be in a position to control the Persian Gulf and Caspian Basin oil regions through intimidation and invasion.

The sad thing is, your policy there doesn’t even seem to be designed to serve the energy needs of the US, but rather to make a very, very small handful of people even more rich than they are now.

Eventually the American people will figure this out too, and no amount of phony terror alerts or even letting the terrorists take another shot at us will distract them from tarring you with the same brush as Bush.

If you believe in democracy, you will level with the American people about our reasons for going into Iraq, and pull out our troops as quickly as possible.

The longer you wait to do so, the more apparent it will be that you don’t care about democracy in Iraq—or in the United States.

Addresses:

Sen. Lamar Alexander
302 Hart Office Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. George Allen
204 Russel Senate Office Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Joe Biden
201 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Lincoln Chafee
141A Russell
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Norm Coleman
320 Hart Office Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Christopher Dodd
448 Russell Senate Office Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Russ Feingold
506 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington DC 20510-4904

Sen. Chuck Hagel
248 Russell Senate Office Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. John Kerry
304 Russell Bldg.
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Richard Lugar
306 Hart Senate Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Mel Martinez
317 Hart Office Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Lisa Murkowski
709 Hart Office Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Bill Nelson
Hart Senate Office Bldg 716
Washington DC 20510-4904

Sen. Barack Obama
713 Hart Senate Office Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. Paul Sarbanes
309 Hart Senate Office Bldg.
Washington 20510

Sen. John Sununu
111 Russel Office Bldg
Washington DC 20510

Sen. George Voinovich
524 Hart Office Bldg
Washington DC 205010


Hillbilly Hitler art:



Blog:

[fooj]

1. Excellent letter.

Thanks for the references.

Peace.