according to The Globe and Mail<\/a>, received millions of dollars from the CIA and US government to get rid of the Taliban, yet after doing so proceeded to allow them to become part of the de facto government. He was also the man who admitted to receiving $1 million a week from his share of import duties and from the opium trade. Keep in mind that most Afghans live on less than a dollar a day.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Ever-so characteristic of a Bush selection, the elections in which Karzai ran were rife with chicanery and general corruption, along with ‘support’ from people like Karim Khalili, current Vice President who has also been accused of war crimes and killing thousands of people. And we thought quail hunting gone awry was bad. After being confronted about the alleged ballot stuffing and intimidation, all Karzai had to say was that “there was fraud in 2004, there is today, there will be tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
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The leadership, or lack thereof, is well noted among Afghans. In a recent survey conducted with over 1,250 Afghans from 13 provinces, half of them admit to paying for bribes, and 60% think that Karzai\u2019s government is more corrupt than the Taliban, the mujahedeen or Communist regimes. As far as cost is concerned, it ranges from the equivalent of $50 to $300 to vote in a National Assembly election, and $6,000-$8,000 for a court appointment. But don\u2019t worry about any of this messing with the picturesque portrait of progress: Afghanistan doesn\u2019t have conspiracy or racketeering laws that would allow for prosecution. And furthermore, the Karzai government has derailed the few investigations that have been initiated.<\/p>\n
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Par for the course in American foreign policy, applying a new strategy to one country simply wasn\u2019t enough for its ambitious authors. And so Bush replicated another pathogenic pod of hollow democracy in yet another Middle Eastern country: Iraq. What little Iraq lost in corruption, it gained in toothless, nominal democracy. The reasons for the US government\u2019s entrance and intervention in Iraq were sparse and spurious at best, as was the US government\u2019s actual presence there. Largely turning toward contractors from the beginning of the war, the Bush Administration outsourced Iraqi Army training, logistical and tactical support, translation services, and even the handling of sensitive intelligence operations to unaccountable and lawless private forces like Blackwater. This, as the bipartisan Gansler Commission reported, \u201cessentially created an opportunity to create fraud\u201d in Iraq reconstruction. Yet, as so masterfully decreed by Paul Bremer in 2004, contractors are immune from Iraqi prosecution.<\/p>\n
With an equally bleak attitude, Feisal Amin Istrabadi, diplomat, supporter of US-led invasion of Iraq and principal architect of Iraq\u2019s interim constitution, said in an interview<\/a> that Prime Minister al-Maliki and \u201cthis government [has] got to go.\u201d This coming from a man who was in Iraq when Saddam Hussein came to power. Citing the Iraqi government as an \u201cillusion,\u201d Istrabadi cast aspersions toward the US\u2019 insistence in 2005 elections in that they stopped the \u201c[development] of robust democratic institutions to buffer the influence of religious leaders\u201d before they could even begin, thus leading to ‘sectarian doling out of Cabinet ministries.’\u201d This, he said, brought about even more controversy and political gridlock between the Sunnis and Shiites and led nowhere except to \u201cdemocratic\u201d doldrums. However, Bush still was able to give a good speech wherein he hit the quota of liberty-lovers\u2019 mots cles<\/em>, as he called the elections a \u201cgreat triumph in the history of liberty,\u201d and stated that Iraqi sentiments were \u201cgrowing in optimism and hope.\u201d Or rather, as Istrabadi noted, \u201cchaos and instability.\u201d<\/p>\nTo quote the ever relevant classic, \u201cClueless,\u201d what the Bush Administration saw from across an ocean was nothing more than a Middle Eastern Monet. From far away, it\u2019s OK, but up close, it\u2019s a big old mess. If democracy is to function, let alone flourish, elsewhere, it must grow from the ideals and actions of its own people, not in the form of bombs based on hyperbolic threats nor from handpicked leaders and transplanted institutional structures.<\/p>\n
However, the Arab Spring and the primary countries that it entails, namely Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, could be more successful in their own regime changes for that very reason. Not because of President Bush. Not because of President Obama. Not because of anyone at the top, especially from such a distance. True change, as these rebellions have noticed and have acted upon, must start from the bottom up. It must start from city squares. Or, as Tunisian Mohamed Bouazazi realized, it must start from the streets. <\/p>\n
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Former street vendor Bouazazi is largely attributed for sparking the Tunisian Revolution, and by effect, the many revolutions that followed in neighboring North African and Middle Eastern countries in the months to come. Amid unemployment and corruption woes, Bouazazi lit himself on fire one morning in January after claiming harassment and humiliation from local officials and having suffered years of injustice from the hands of the Ben Ali regime. After his death, a huge amount of protests and riots ensued that gathered support from all walks of life, be it the strikes of 8,000 lawyers, labor unions, or the gathering of 100,000 plus Tunisians to rally against the government. Staggeringly, the 23-year reign of President Ben Ali ended a mere 28 days later after just one man expressed his deep disillusionment by self-immolation.<\/p>\n