Oct 22, 2004 0
The big question, asked & answered.
Bush: I would accept Islamic Iraq
Mr Bush told the Associated Press in an interview that he would accept such a result if elections were open and fair.
"I will be disappointed. But democracy is democracy," he said during an interview given on Air Force One.
"If that's what the people choose, that's what the people choose," he said. Free elections are expected in the country next January.
Speaking as he travelled between campaign stops, Mr Bush said the US would leave Iraq "once we've helped them to get on the path of stability and democracy".
He added: "It's very difficult for me to predict what forces will exist although I will tell you that Iraq's leadership has made it quite clear that they can manage their own affairs at the appropriate time."
Correspondents say Mr Bush's comments appear to clash with earlier remarks from his administration which rejected calls soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime for the creation of an Islamic state similar to that of its neighbour, Iran.
This already happened, more than ten years ago: in Algeria. In 1992 the Islamists won the first round of democratic elections and looked ready to win the run-off when the ruling party, the FLN, declared the elections void, launching the country into a civil war. France supported the FLN but the U.S. under George H.W. Bush stayed neutral, refusing to endorse either the prospect of an Islamic government or the anti-democratic alternative. Of course they had the freedom to shy away from that question because Algeria was and remains a French problem. In Iraq they won't have that privilege.
But be very clear. The point of "regime change" in Iraq is to install a cooperative puppet, one responsive to U.S. business interests in the region. A theocracy poses no inherent contradiction to that objective: witness our friends on the Arabian peninsula. If anything a theocracy is more likely to squash dissent, thereby ensuring that the country is "secure" for the free flow of capital. America's main worry in the case of Algeria was that it would not repay its debt, but this is not an issue in Iraq; whatever regime gets set up there will be beholden to American interests one way or another, and in case they have doubts over such a situation we'll have troops on the ground to remind them.
An Islamic win in Iraq would be a PR disaster for Bush, but only in the short term, and anyway, if there's anything we've learned in the last four years, it's that Bush doesn't care much about public relations. He has other priorities.
