At an address to the Vanguard of the Demintern, the International Republican Institute, George W. Bush announced a bold new initiative to expropriate another $100 million (out of a total of $1.3 billion to "promote democracy") from the American taxpayer for a for a new "Conflict Response Fund" to help consolidate the people power revolutions. This funding request will include $24 million to create an "Active Response Corps" of U.S. foreign and civil service officers to deploy quickly to crisis situations as "civilian first responders."
No more can these glorious "people's power" revolutions be trusted in the hands of US-funded locals -- too risky. Now, as John Laughland writes, the US controls both the government and the opposition movements within these countries so as to assure that no matter what happens, Washington's interests will come out on top.
This is nothing new. At the late stages of Soviet rule, the idea in Eastern Europe was for the communists to create opposition movements so as to give the impression of "reform" voices while still controlling the general direction of the revolution. Hence political parties such as what became the Alliance of Free Democrats in Hungary, which were government approved opposition movements to ensure that Western loans would continue to flow to subsidize socialism's suicidal economic policies. No matter who won finally, it was the cadres who always came out on top. This also had the added benefit of defining any political party that didn't fit into the accepted "opposition" movement as "extreme" and only worthy of the strongest condemnation and isolation.
This practice remains, including in places like Hungary, but it is now the US that has adopted the former USSR line on the opposition in the name of defining and supporting a guaranteed compliant client party AND the opposition parties. US policy embraced the Soviet hangover as if it were its own...
So when "unapproved" Viktor Orban was elected prime minister in Hungary in 1998, his government was continuously undermined in Washington and ultimately he was declared persona non grata in the Bush White House. Too independent and not under US control. So with US help in 2002, the US-backed coalition of former communists and "approved" opposition Free Democrats once again took their place in the ruling position of Hungarian society.
The parallels are too numerous to mention here, but the Bush announcement of a codification of the Demintern in the FY 2006 budget signals the administration's confidence that it will be embraced heartily by both Left and Right. A safe bet. I received a letter from a leading "antiwar" Democrat politician today urging the United States to export democracy to Darfur...whatever the cost.
The IRI crowd cheered Bush's initiative with great enthusiasm -- who would dare be the first to stop clapping? A great budget increase is promised, as the IRI is nearly 100 percent funded by the American taxpayer. In response to this great gift from the president, the International Republican Institute, a US government entity, awarded President Bush the "Freedom Award." This also is noting new. In 1939 the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet awarded as its first recipient of the "Hero of Socialist Labor" Josef Stalin. Who could think of doing otherwise?
So US Demintern Vanguard will be ready to deploy, like Team America but a lot less funny, wherever a "people's revolution" needs consolidated. And "conservatives" don't bat an eye at this overt Trotskyism. For pete's sake, even an old socialist like George Galloway knows a Trotskyite when he sees one...
Of course all of this will fail. History teaches us this and history is no liar. But it is the lives that will be ruined in the process, the lives lost, the economies ruined, the sorrow sown, that colors the imposition of ideology by force a deep black. The color of satan smiling and reveling in this playground of the damned.
