Marketing democracy : a United States foreign policy in Iraq

Abstract

This paper addresses the US Foreign Policy towards Iraq, its genesis, its developments and its consequences. For anyone committed to Human Rights and Democratization, what is happening in the troubled Middle East region is a matter of grave concern due to its long term consequences and effects on international relations. The use of the term Democracy to justify controversial actions, and the employment of modern marketing techniques to ‘sell’ the legitimacy of war has been all to common in the Iraqi context. This paper seeks to find the prelude to this ghastly war in the powerful lobbies, and pressure groups that contributed to shape a foreign policy to reach their short term interests, and not necessarily those of the American Nation, a beacon of Democracy with its mature and relatively well functioning system of “checks and balances.” The neoconservative ideology and dominance, and the powerful Jewish lobby coincided in tracing the line for a very disputable intervention that created a low-level civil war and the humanitarian mayhem that is now everyday news. Oil, strategic interests, “infancy democracy”, civil contractors, torture, and exclusive “embedded” reporters are some of the incompatible keywords they are the explosive ingredients of a war that started and continues, without an end in sight.