Clearly Irony Is Not Dead

In this morning's radio address, President Bush said the following:

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. For more than a week, the people of the nation of Georgia have withstood assault from the Russian military. The world has watched with alarm as Russia invaded a sovereign neighboring state and threatened a democratic government elected by its people. This act is completely unacceptable to the free nations of the world.

The United States and our allies stand with the people of Georgia and their democratically elected government. We insist that Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity be respected. And Moscow must honor its pledge to withdraw its invading forces from all Georgian territory.

It's not so surprising that the president said this, he has, after all, been saying this all week. What is so amazing is that he said it with a straight face (his usual smirk notwithstanding). Here is a man who invaded another sovereign nation, destroyed its infrastructure and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and who has made no move to withdraw any troops from that sovereign nation, all in the name of bringing democracy (at least that's one of the reasons espoused).

The people of Iraq must surely have noticed the hypocrisy of the president's statement. Living under an occupation and being governed by US puppets is clearly weighing on them, as this opinion piece written by Fatih Abdulsalam and published in Iraq's Azzaman makes clear.

Let us try to describe the kind of ‘democracy’ the U.S. has implanted in Iraq.

Using its deadly and fearful military machine, the U.S. has exported the democracy of dark and rotten vestibules to Iraq whose smell now stings the eyes and nostrils of anyone with common sense.

It is the democracy of bombardment, shelling, indiscriminate killing, massive prisoner abuses, turning millions of people into refugees, attacking with warplanes and heavy armor major cities, towns and villages and dividing a unified nation along ethnic and sectarian lines.

For these polices which the U.S. initiated and Iraqi politicians have been copying we have lost so much innocent blood.

Iraq’s share of democracy is death, division, homelessness, lack of basic and rudimentary amenities and escape into nowhere.

Is there an alternative to the fake democracy the U.S. has been selling to Iraq?

There will be no way out for Iraq as long as U.S. and Iraqi politicians laugh at each other.

There will be one crisis after another. Some of the problems will exacerbate and there will be no force on earth to contain them.

I think that summarizes things quite nicely.

Heckuva job, George.