{"id":896,"date":"2004-05-01T03:06:36","date_gmt":"2004-05-01T07:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/05\/brownskinned_democracy\/"},"modified":"2004-05-01T03:06:36","modified_gmt":"2004-05-01T07:06:36","slug":"brownskinned_democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/05\/brownskinned_democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"“Brown-Skinned” Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Josh Marshall raises a good point in calling out President Bush for invoking race when discussing Iraq<\/a>.
\nAt last month’s press conference<\/a>, Bush pontificated:<\/p>\n

Some of the debate really center around the fact that people don’t believe Iraq can be free; that if you’re Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can’t be self-governing and free. I strongly disagree with that. I reject that, because I believe that freedom is the deepest need of every human soul, and, if given a chance, the Iraqi people will be not only self-governing, but a stable and free society.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I thought this was just one of those weird comments he makes when not reading off the teleprompter. But he raised this point again yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of people in the world who don’t believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren’t necessarily — are a different color than white can self-govern.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Last time I checked, America, or India, or a host of other countries where the citizens govern themselves aren’t just white<\/i>. But as for his point, who is criticizing our nation-building foray into Iraq on the basis of race? I’ve heard plenty of people who are skeptical on our chances of establishing a full democracy in Iraq, but the difficulties they always discuss are (1) the fact that Iraq has never been a democracy, or (2) how the rival factions make it difficult to construct a new government. I don’t hear any one playing the race card . . . except for Bush.
\nSeems like this is another way the administration is going after those who question it’s policies–brand them as racists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Josh Marshall raises a good point in calling out President Bush for invoking race when discussing Iraq. At last month’s press conference, Bush pontificated: Some of the debate really center around the fact that people don’t believe Iraq can be free; that if you’re Muslim, or perhaps brown-skinned, you can’t be self-governing and free. I […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-896","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}