COMMENTARY: A wheezing democracy enters a new era
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By Pekka Mykkänen in Washington DC
Roughly a month ago, public health researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore published a study that suggested the war in Iraq would have claimed the lives of nearly 655,000 Iraqis. The figure was more than ten times greater than previous estimates.
Instead of a closer examination being made of the methodology and results of this survey of 1,849 Iraqi households, it was dismissed as bunk and even as being politically motivated. President George W. Bush said merely "I don't consider it a credible report", though he did not offer any other estimate of Iraqi casualties, nor has his administration made any active effort to determine these numbers.
It is a completely ludicrous idea that a team of researchers would go knocking on 1,849 doors in what is perhaps the most dangerous country in the world simply in order to concoct a lie.
It is of course possible to assume there is some flaw in the research results. But it would have been heartwarming if there had been a political outcry in the United States and if there had been a call for a comprehensive study of the true scale of the Iraqi casualties. The waves could have started from the White House, or from Congress, or the press.
Does the United States not have a moral responsibility - if nothing else - to explain to the Iraqis how many noughts there are in the scale of their dead?
A couple of weeks back, the principal architect of the war on terror, Vice President Dick Cheney, gave an endorsement for "a dunk in water", or simulated drowning as an interrogation technique, in an off-the-cuff comment to a television interviewer.
He apparently no longer remembered a time when it would have been inconceivable for a Vice President of the United States of America to say such a thing, even if he harboured the thoughts.
There is no way one might claim the U.S. system to be a dictatorship, but its last few years could be depicted as a period when its democracy has been brutalised, has taken leave of absence, or is otherwise out of kilter.
In the fog of the war on terror, Bush and his inner circle have adopted the frame of mind associated with dictatorships: an indifference towards human life, a scoffing attitude towards laws and international agreements, the stifling of the press and the opposition, a desire to reduce the breathing-space accorded its citizens and the judiciary, and an overweening arrogance towards the outside world.
When one thinks of the inborn American tendency towards idealism, the nation's rich political heritage, and its enormous potential to do good in the world, the years of the recent past must be described in terms like disappointment, fiasco, and tragedy.
It will take a generation or so of historians' writings before it is fully understood what a dark place the Bush administration led the American public into.
On Tuesday last, the American electorate decided that it was time to embark on a new era.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 9.11.2006
The writer is the Helsingin Sanomat Washington correspondent
PEKKA MYKKÄNEN / Helsingin Sanomat
pekka.mykkanen@hs.fi
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| 14.11.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 COMMENTARY: A wheezing democracy enters a new era
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