Title : Establishment alarmed as Trump threatens to gut FAKE US ‘democracy promotion’ racket
link : Establishment alarmed as Trump threatens to gut FAKE US ‘democracy promotion’ racket
Establishment alarmed as Trump threatens to gut FAKE US ‘democracy promotion’ racket
RT | Mar 7, 2018 |
US Senators Chris Murphy and John McCain on stage with opposition activists in Kiev, Ukraine, December 2013. © Gleb Garanich / Reuters |
The 2019 State Department budget request cuts the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) budget and separates it from the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI). Funding for the institutes would be moved to the State Department, where NDI and IRI would have to compete with private contractors, according to the Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin, who described the proposal as “an assault not only on their organizations but also on the pro-democracy mission they are dedicated to.”
“If implemented, the proposal would gut the program, force crippling layoffs and the symbolic meaning would also be shattering, sending a signal far and wide that the United States is turning its back on supporting brave people who share our values,” NED President Carl Gershman told Rogin.
“The work our government does to promote democratic values abroad is at the heart of who we are as a country,” Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), chairman of the IRI’s board of directors, told Rogin. The NDI board is chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
McCain actually wrote a letter protesting the proposal to the Office of Management and Budget in December. It was signed by four other senators, including McCain's close ally Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida).
Trump’s people “just don’t believe it’s America’s business to push democracy abroad,” Rogin concluded.
His article quickly made the rounds of the Washington establishment circles, where it received praise from former CIA agent and failed presidential candidate Evan McMullin and New Republic columnist Jeet Heer. Nicholas Burns, who served as State Department spokesman under Albright, said the revelations will “make your blood boil.”
.@joshrogin: The Trump administration’s assault on democracy promotion can be expected to continue. Dictatorships are presenting their model as preferable for the developing world. Human rights abuses are rising. Basic freedoms are under attack. https://t.co/IRDT91JZAt— Evan McMullin (@Evan_McMullin) March 5, 2018
2. Democracy promotion in foreign policy had genuine bipartisan support from Carter to Obama. Trump has broken that consensus.— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) March 6, 2018
This will also make your blood boil. The State Department is giving up on our historic support for democracy promotion that none other than Ronald Reagan pioneered. https://t.co/uQOpWnolme— Nicholas Burns (@RNicholasBurns) March 5, 2018
This is the kind of blatant, jingoistic historical revisionism that the Trump era has made fashionable again. The idea that the US had been devoted to "democracy promotion" before Trump - and that this was pioneered by tyrant-hugging Reagan - is simply laughable: https://t.co/JrVqWt3CP7— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 6, 2018
Oh, Mr. Burns, do tell us more about Reagan's "democracy promotion" with Rios Montt. And did Reagan have a special aide to follow behind him and mop up the innocent blood dripping - pouring - from his hands? Oh, tell us the glorious story, Mr. Burns!— Chris Floyd (@empireburlesque) March 6, 2018
The confusing thing about Harvard, Yale, etc. is that the job of people working there in the hard sciences actually is to describe reality accurately, whereas the job of many humanities professors like Nicholas Burns is to lie about reality https://t.co/e5EQhQfL5O— Jon Schwarz (@schwarz) March 6, 2018
Nicky, Nicky... no more day drinking unless you're going on CNN. Democracy promotion in Nicaragua, Salvador, Guatemala, Lebanon... or maybe Iraq 3x, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya? What ARE you talking about? https://t.co/D3t2TknjzS— Peter Van Buren (@WeMeantWell) March 6, 2018
Libya thanks you for their US installed democracy. The slave market was a bit of a surprise and the fact that there are three waring factions all claiming to be the government, but I'm sure you know what's best.— Kropotkin (@DoctorKropotkin) March 7, 2018
Democracy! Promoted! pic.twitter.com/hXnhJsHuxi— B (@balvertos) March 7, 2018
“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” one of the endowment’s founders, Allen Weinstein, told the Washington Post in September 1991.
One example is the wave of “color revolutions,” starting from Serbia in 2000 to the “Arab Spring” revolts of 2011. Ukraine was subjected to this twice, in 2004 and in 2014. During the unrest in Kiev in November 2004, The Guardian’s Ian Traynor described the process, while heaping praise on the people behind it.
“The operation - engineering democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience - is now so slick that the methods have matured into a template for winning other people's elections,” Traynor wrote. “The Democratic party's National Democratic Institute, the Republican party's International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros's open society institute.”
Though campaigns funded by all these external actors are more astroturf than grassroots, there were few objections, as it was all in the name of democracy.
Traynor concluded his 2004 story by saying the “places to watch” were Moldova and Central Asia. Sure enough, the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan went through a “Pink revolution” in February 2005, while the “Grape revolution” took place in Moldova in April 2009.
The Washington establishment’s obsession with democracy may also be explained by the belief that any non-democratic government is automatically anti-Western, as Luis Fleischman of the neoconservative Center for Security Policy argued last month.
If the regime is pro-American, however, it doesn’t matter whether it’s actually democratic or not. On Tuesday, the director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Mark Dubowitz tweeted that “inclusive authoritarianism” might be a better fit for Middle Eastern countries, as long as they were “tolerant, respectful of individual liberties & minority rights & pro-American.”
Btw, I said a more “inclusive authoritarianism” *might* be better alternative. Tolerant, respectful of individual liberties & minority rights & pro-American. I suggested should be discussed. So spare me the invective & explain why worse than failed M/E democracies. https://t.co/yQJWKQ5V3z— Mark Dubowitz (@mdubowitz) March 7, 2018
Thus articles Establishment alarmed as Trump threatens to gut FAKE US ‘democracy promotion’ racket
that is all articles Establishment alarmed as Trump threatens to gut FAKE US ‘democracy promotion’ racket This time, hopefully can provide benefits to all of you. Okay, see you in another article posting.
You now read the article Establishment alarmed as Trump threatens to gut FAKE US ‘democracy promotion’ racket with the link address https://happyhealthylifesimple.blogspot.com/2018/03/establishment-alarmed-as-trump.html
0 Response to "Establishment alarmed as Trump threatens to gut FAKE US ‘democracy promotion’ racket"
Post a Comment