Can Democracy Survive Bush's Embrace?

It started off as a joke and has now become vaguely serious: the idea that Bono might be named president of the World Bank. U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow recently described Bono as "a rock star of the development world," adding, "He's somebody I admire."

The job will almost certainly go to a U.S. citizen, one with even weaker credentials, like Paul Wolfowitz. But there is a reason Bono is so admired in the administration that the White House might just choose an Irishman. As frontman of one of the world's most enduring rock brands, Bono talks to Republicans as they like to see themselves: not as administrators of a diminishing public sphere they despise but as CEOs of a powerful private corporation called America. "Brand U.S.A. is in trouble ... it's a problem for business," Bono warned at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The solution is "to re-describe ourselves to a world that is unsure of our values."

The Bush administration wholeheartedly agrees, as evidenced by the orgy of redescription that now passes for American foreign policy. Faced with an Arab world enraged by the U.S. occupation of Iraq and its blind support for Israel, the solution is not to change these brutal policies; it is, in the pseudo-academic language of corporate branding, to "change the story."

Brand U.S.A.'s latest story was launched on Jan. 30, the day of the Iraqi elections, complete with a catchy tag line ("purple power"), instantly iconic imagery (purple fingers) and, of course, a new narrative about America's role in the world, helpfully told and retold by the White House's unofficial brand manager, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. "Iraq has been reframed from a story about Iraqi 'insurgents' trying to liberate their country from American occupiers and their Iraqi 'stooges' to a story of the overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a democracy, with U.S. help, against the wishes of Iraqi Baathist-fascists and jihadists." This new story is so contagious, we are told, that it has set off a domino effect akin to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism. (Although in "Arabian Spring," the only wall in sight – Israel's apartheid wall – pointedly stays up).

As with all branding campaigns, the power is in the repetition, not in the details. Obvious non sequiturs (is Bush taking credit for Arafat's death?) and screeching hypocrisies (occupiers against occupation!) just mean it's time to tell the story again, only louder and more slowly, obnoxious tourist-style. Even so, with Bush now claiming that "Iran and other nations have an example in Iraq," it seems worth focusing at least briefly on the reality of the Iraqi example. The state of emergency was just renewed for its fifth month and the United Iraqi Alliance, despite winning a clear majority, still can't form a government. The problem is not that Iraqis have lost faith in the democracy for which they risked their lives on Jan. 30 – it's that the electoral system imposed on them by Washington is profoundly undemocratic.

Terrified at the prospect of an Iraq ruled by Iraqis, former chief U.S. Envoy Paul Bremer designed elections that gave the U.S.-friendly Kurds 27 percent of the seats in the National Assembly even though they make up as little as 15 percent of the population. And since the U.S.-authored interim constitution requires an absurdly high majority for all major decisions, the Kurds now hold the country hostage. Their central demand is control over Kirkuk; if they get it, and then decide to separate, Iraqi Kurdistan will handily include the massive northern oil fields. Kurdish Iraqis have a legitimate claim to independence, as well as understandable fears of being ethnically targeted. But the U.S.-Kurdish alliance has handed Washington a back-door veto over Iraq's democracy. And with Kirkuk as part of Iraqi Kurdistan, if Iraq does break apart, Washington will still end up with a dependent, oil-rich regime – even if it's somewhat smaller than the one originally envisioned.