Donkey Path's One Year Anniversary

Donkey Path is now a year old. But in various ways I've been dealing with Bush's strange foreign policy since June of 2002 when he first started talking about unilateralism, preemptive strikes and nuclear bunker busters. At first, I wrote scores of letters, then posted on message boards, then made comments on blogs and finally, since my blog comments were beginning to get long, blogging seemed a natural next step.

Here's the first post on Donkey Path on Dec. 13, 2005:

Bush and Democracy in the Middle East


To most of us, democracy, in a meaningful sense, means things like majority rule, checks and balances, protection of minorities and legal rights for those out of power, the rule of law, a vigorous free press and the freedom to live your life within that framework. Now there have been real democracy workers in Iraq talking the issues one expects if Bush were really concerned about democracy.

But the resources devoted to democracy were always poor compared to the resources devoted to the military and American contractors. While American specialists were going around Iraq giving lectures on democracy, we had things that hardly seemed to be about democracy, things such as Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallujah, detainees, a press that was paid to run articles by Americans, etc.

Perhaps when Bush talks about democracy, it's just a code word for American power, privatization and the needs of American business. In the end, whatever Bush is talking about, it isn't about the Iraqis.

And it's certainly not about democracy anymore.

Here's a great cartoon that summarizes the failed presidency of the 'young' George W. in December of 2006.

Onward!