Democracy is being used as a badge of legitimacy for self-gain

THE Americans are promising democracy in Iraq, but at the same time they are saying that they are not going to allow a fundamentalist regime come to power there.

What if the Iraqi people desire a fundamentalist regime are the Americans going to deny them their choice? If they do, it will not be democracy but patent hypocrisy.

Of course, it will not be the first time for the Americans. It would be a repetition of probably their greatest mistake in history. Back in 1954 it was agreed at Geneva that the French forces in Vietnam would withdraw south of the 17th parallel, pending their ultimate withdrawal from the country by July 1956, while the Viet Minh forces of the Marxist Ho Chi Minh would withdraw north of the 17th parallel. The Geneva Accords specifically stipulated that the 17th parallel was just a "military demarcation line" that should be considered "provisional and should not in any way be interpreted as constituting a political or territorial boundary". The agreement further stipulated that there would be free elections throughout Vietnam by July 1956.

But President Dwight Eisenhower prevented those free elections, because all his advisers warned that Ho Chi Minh would win at least 80% of the vote. It was really none of America's business, but they set up the puppet regime of Nho Dinh Diem and they sent in thousands of American military "advisers". Diem was more representative of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) than the people of Vietnam. He was also a Roman Catholic, which proved particularly embarrassing for Eisenhower's successor, John F Kennedy, the first Catholic American president. When Buddhist monks began immolating themselves in the streets of Saigon in protest against the Diem regime, Kennedy had the CIA pull the plug on Diem and he was killed in a coup d'état on November 2, 1963.

More than a few Americans still believe that Kennedy was killed in a comparatively similar coup, orchestrated by some of the same people, 20 days later. There is no doubt that the CIA did not like or trust Kennedy, because he had called off the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and he indicated his intention of withdrawing American advisers from Vietnam. It has long been maintained that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for the CIA, but no conclusive evidence has ever been produced to suggest that the CIA was actually behind Kennedy's assassination. His death just suited the CIA's plans perfectly.

Lyndon Johnson secretly agreed to send over a half a million American troops "to defend" South Vietnam against communist aggression. The communists from the North were supposedly invading the independent South and the Americans announced that they were defending the South in line with the domino theory. It was all a massive lie. The American troops were sent to frustrate the democratic will of the Vietnamese people, who clearly wished to have Ho Chi Minh as their

leader and they had that right in line with the Geneva Accords.

Johnson used the supposed Tonkin Gulf incident of August 1964 to secure congressional authorisation to wage war on the Vietnamese people. Two American destroyers had supposedly been attacked by the Vietnamese in the Gulf of Tonkin. One of the vessels had merely sent out a precautionary report of what turned out to be false radar reading that it was under attack. The other destroyer was engaged in escorting South Vietnamese boats on an assault on North Vietnam and it actually fired the first shot in what turned out to be the briefest of engagements with a North Vietnamese PT boat, which returned fire with a machine gun.

The only damage that the Americans could find was a lone bullet hole on the destroyer.

Yet that bullet hole is still more evidence than what they have been able to produce of the "weapons of mass destruction" for which they justified flouting the United Nations and waging war on Iraq. Saddam deserved to be removed, because he was evil, but why did Daddy Bush not oust him in 1991? The Americans wanted Saddam in place as a counterbalance to the Shi'ite Muslim regime in Iran.

The US did not give a damn about the people of Iraq then, nor do they now either. They would be delighted to get out of Iraq if they could leave a sympathetic government behind them. But they are not about to leave a Shi'ite regime in power, and if that is not what the Iraqi people desire, they are going to have to fight to put it in place. When members of the Bush administration talk about democracy, they are talking about implementing their own wishes.

Tony Blair was part of the coalition that toppled Saddam, so many people could be looking to him to keep the Bush bunch in line, but Blair seems to have his own weird ideas about democracy. He postponed the elections in Northern Ireland from the end of this month until next October at least because the people of Northern Ireland were not going to vote as he wished. What makes him think that they will vote the way he desires later?

The pundits were suggesting that Sinn Féin would decimate the SDLP in the nationalist/republican communities, while Ian Paisley's DUP was likely to wipe out David Trimble's UUP in unionist/loyalist areas. All of the parties in the North, with the exception of the UUP, were calling for the elections this month. Thus, the representatives of the overwhelming majority of the people supported the elections, but Blair decided to call them off, possibly at the behest of Trimble.

There can be little doubt that Blair took it upon himself to make that decision on Thursday morning.

Paul Murphy, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, had indicated that morning that the elections were not being called off. He did not know that Michael McDowell, our Minister for Justice, had already announced to the world that the British government was calling off the elections. Murphy had then to inform the House of Commons, even though most of the world had already been informed, thanks to McDowell and Sky News.

The British do not normally tolerate their ministers spreading misinformation, unlike our Government, which not only lied to the Dáil and the people last year but it put that lie in writing and then treated the House with utter contempt by behaving as if such duplicitous behaviour was the norm.

Murphy still has the problem that he indicated that the clarification provided by Gerry Adams on Wednesday was sufficient, according to Sinn Féin sources. He should be more than just embarrassed. He has grounds to be distinctly worried if Blair's decision was taken without consulting him, especially if he remembers how Blair shafted a couple of his predecessors Mo Mowlam and Peter Mandelson.

The really important issue now is not whether Murphy is being shafted, but whether the people of Northern Ireland think that Blair has shafted them by denying them their democratic rights. If they think he has treated them contemptuously, they could become all the more determined to demonstrate their disgust by supporting Sinn Féin or the DUP at the polls in October.