In their ongoing attempt to destroy the institutions of limited government and liberty that make possible their own existence as intellectuals, the BBC is reporting over and over and over that Paul Bremer will meet Kofi Annan soon in order ‘to press for UN support for an unelected government in Iraq.’ Earlier they had announced that the U.S. was opposing ‘democracy’ in Iraq. The controversy, of course, has to do with strategic jockeying for advantage on behalf of leaders of the majority Shi’a population. But electing representatives to a constitutional process by regional caucuses is not clearly inferior or less ‘democratic’ than having a mass election with the majority simply crushing the minority and instituting the well known ‘democratic’ system of one-man/one-vote/one-time that the BBC prefers. The BBC’s editors have made it well known for some time how much they hate the institutions of limited government, freedom of speech for anyone other than themselves, and so on, and how fervently they wish for the death of each and every American citizen. But please, please, don’t punish the Iraqis, too, by insisting that they be subjected to a one-party state exercising unlimited power. They’ve had too much experience of that already.
If you’re going to single out the BBC for criticism, it seems only fair that you should also hold Foxnews.com to account. Consider the story “Bremer: U.S. Iraq Occupation Deadline Must Stand” posted at: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108687,00.html
“Earlier, White House spokesman Scott McClellan offered to refine the plan for turning over power to Iraqis, but he also insisted on sticking with the framework of an agreement that calls for an unelected, temporary government by July 1.”
That’s how Foxnews.com describes the proposed administration, which will likely accept continuing U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Good point, Mark. There is a slight difference, however, in the use of the term “temporary,” which was absent from the BBC’s “reporting.” It is disturbing that a call for immediate (or damn close) direct elections, without any constitutional framework of law in place, is given the positive spin as “democracy,” whereas indirect elections to create a constitutional framework of law to precede elections is dismissed as “opposing democracy.” The BBC is exploiting the general misunderstanding of representative government that was well described in the first portions of Fareed Zakharia’s _The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad_. What most people mean by “democracy” is a system of constitutionally limited representative government that has a democratic element, i.e., elections of representatives. Let’s hope that Iraq is given some such system, rather than what the BBC calls “democracy,” which would turn rather quickly into what their own editors would not allow (by internal BBC rules) to be called a “dictatorship.”