The Solution to Iraq: US out, Bring in the Brazilians

Let's face it. The U.S. can't shoot straight. If there's a job to do, like say, freedom-fightin', we bungle it. We've got the most expensive, technically advanced superpower military on the rock, and we're sinking fast in a little simple quicksand put out by backwater "insurgents" armed with 3rd rate outdated, even handmade weapons (IED's)... And the sinkhole keeps on pullin'. And Iraq keeps on degenerating. Democracy? Get out of my face...

Where's the solution? Ask U.S. pundits, and you hear "there's no solution...we need 50 years..." Ask Iraqis & you hear "Let's get out before we all die..." Ask Brazilian soccer coaches, & you get "Iraqis are great team players- it's a win-win!" Now who would you choose to problem-solve?

And so it was. It didn't stop the bombs or the war. But it did stop the lies, the despair, and the hatred. Even for one glorious day, Iraq was a country again, populated by people who are worthwhile, people with dignity & dreams, people with a future... With a great soccer team. And the Asia Cup. No Shi'a, no Sunnis, no Kurds, no sectarian animosity. Just countrymen. Who'd have imagined it?

Not the Bush administration, certainly. So Republicans, now that you got your war you wanted, you can plan your exit strategy, since the war isn't doing any good. But before you leave, send in the Brazilians...

I think they've got something there.

Let's Rename the Iraq War, Charley

Bridgethought of the Day: If someone else said it better, just listen.

So please read this column by Charley Reese - which says it all. Yes, we should rename that ugly war the Republican War. And then elect a Democratic administration to get us out.

Iraq's Health Care Hell

With all our concern about health care in this country, and of course, our troops, who receive health care insofar as it serves the War Purpose, a not-so-high-minded cross between statistics repair (making less deaths show up) and soldier repair (getting the same guys operational and on the battlefield), we are almost entirely ignoring the ghastly state of health care in our "fiasco"-oriented "model democracy-in-waiting" state, Iraq.


Of course, that follows in the dreaded, obfuscated world of Human Compassion, a netherworld to neocons wherein reside residual liberals whom Ann Coulter continuously plies with verbal emasculation attempts. So we, the American War & Profit Machine, ignore it.


But for those of you sufficiently weaned from Coulter's freeze-dried emotion-free machomonied teat to still retain working tear ducts and a 4-chamber heart (the old-fashioned kind), it might be valuable to know the depths to which our VP's war has sunk the National Entity formerly known as Iraq.


This great article on Dahr Jamail's website paint a horrific picture - one all should have to see for enough time to sink in, to savor in those blase hours Wii'd away from gadgets, muzik, & DVD's, a pinch of the real world we have helped create and for which We the People should blame, hassle & impeach those leaders responsible.


Baquba Denied the Healing Touch
Inter Press Service

By Ahmed Ali

BAQUBA, Jul 25 (IPS) - Diyala General Hospital in the provincial capital Baquba has been hit by severe lack of supplies amid ongoing attacks by militants.
Located 50km northeast of Baghdad, the city of Baquba has become known now for both the huge U.S. military operations and the presence of al-Qaeda.
The shortages coupled with a lack of basic infrastructure have left the largest hospital in Diyala province short of supplies, and staffed by terrorised doctors often unable to do their job.
Diyala General Hospital, built in the 1970's, was never adequately resourced since the devastating Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and the dozen years of economic sanctions since the early 1990s.

When the U.S.-led occupation began in April 2003, administrators promised reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq's healthcare system. It never came. This hospital, like countless others in Iraq, is in a far worse condition today than even during the sanctions period when more than half a million Iraqi children died from malnutrition, disease and lack of adequate healthcare.

The problems appear to begin and end with lack of security.

"One day, a number of Iraqi army casualties caused by a suicide car bomb were brought to the hospital by a military patrol," Mohammed Ali, a 39-year-old orthopaedic surgeon told IPS. "The soldiers began to insult the staff, and hit two physicians after ordering them to leave other patients and treat the wounded soldiers first."

Doctors announced a strike, Ali said. "A few days later the head of the physicians syndicate called an end to the strike after intervention by the mayor."

But doctors have continued to face abuse, Nasseer Adil, a 42-year-old pathologist told IPS. "It has become very normal that any person can come and insult anyone in the hospital."
Over time, the abuse and threats have driven many doctors to leave their job, and when they can, the country.

"The staff members began to come to work intermittently, and sometimes we could hardly see one physician in the whole hospital," Haleem Kareem, a 46-year-old receptionist at the hospital told IPS.

Dr Ahmed Shibad, a 30-year-old orthopaedic surgeon, fled the hospital for Syria four months ago after he said he received death threats from Iraqi soldiers backed by U.S. forces.

During an interview with IPS in Damascus in May he said, "The Iraqi forces who regularly came into the hospital to order us around and abuse us were supported by the American military. The American soldiers watched the Iraqis do this to us, and this is another reason why I left."

By October 2006, 18,000 Iraqi doctors, over half of all doctors in Iraq, had fled the country, according to a report by Radio Free Europe.

Now many people in Baquba go to private clinics in hope of better treatment and security. But while the main hospital offers free treatment, private clinics can be expensive.

Violence continues to plague the Baquba hospital. "The fighters used to attack Iraqi army soldiers who used to bring their casualties and bodies to the hospital," Hadi Sadeq, a 40-year-old official in the emergency unit told IPS. "For this reason staff quit, and people in need of treatment stopped to come."

Complicating matters further has been corruption within Iraq's Ministry of Health in Baghdad.
The ministry, which has been run by officials loyal to Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has been accused of favouring Shia areas in Iraq. Baquba, a mixed area, has been considered a Sunni area by the ministry.

Doctors at Diyala General Hospital told IPS they believe that the Heath Ministry has hindered the supply of medical equipment and supplies to their hospital for sectarian reasons.
"The Diyala director-general of health was kidnapped in the building of the Health Ministry itself, and was later killed in Sadr city," Majid Ibrahim, a 48-year-old ophthalmologist told IPS. "It is a well-known incident, admitted even by the health minister, Dr Ali al-Shamary."
A hospital worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS that lately the government has been trying to increase protection for the hospital but that "unfortunately, the guards are all Shia."

(*Ahmed, a correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region.)

Why There's No Mideast Peace: Square One is for Hanging

Bridgethought of the Day: Killing your enemies doesn't make peace. Winning a war isn't a solution. Peace is organic - war requires oversimplification. Peace is about a lot of little real struggles not being bulldozed by gigantic, possibly pointless, fantastic battle. The bigger the power, the more they like the latter.

Square One in the Alpha-Omega of Mideast Peace always begins between Palestine & Israel. The Palestinians were pushed out by the Zionist movement, who routed Palestinians from their own land by force to make room for a well-armed invasion of what were essentially foreigners. The whole thing has been re-written to suit the Israelis and presented over years to Americans and "Westerners" in a pro-Zionist light, any thoughts to the contrary being relegated to the devil called "anti-Semitism". Saeb Erakat, the prominent Palestinian negotiator, once (many years ago) put that argument to the test in his eloquent remark during a public discussion, "I am Semite."

In the excellent article by Tony Karon, he says,

"Hamas deputy head Abu Marzook recently made clear in the Los Angeles Times, not because of some religious absolutism but because, for Palestinians, Israel's creation in 1948 meant their violent dispossession. Hamas believes it is being ordered to legitimize this dispossession before negotiations can even begin, and it refuses to do so.
The fact that Fatah did eventually recognize Israel -- and got so little in return -- has cost the organization dearly on the Palestinian street. Nine months into the Western financial blockade that followed Hamas' election victory, a survey conducted by the Western-funded Palestinian Center for Social and Political Research found 54% of Palestinians dissatisfied with Hamas' performance in power and only 40% ready to vote for it again. Nonetheless, when asked whether Hamas should recognize Israel in order to get the siege lifted, 67% said no. "

Square One begins with Palestinians asking for a legitimate and autonomous state. Not too much to ask. Then they ask for "right of return" which means that those who were deprived of their lands way back when can now have the right to return to the Homeland of Palestine. Israel staunchly refuses this, using an argument that more or less the US government used in dealing with the native American populations in places such as South Dakota. "You just can't go back home now - too much has changed." But unlike native Americans, Palestinians don't really have "reservations" even - just places they live in as refugees or immigrants. And in reverse, where did Israelis get a superior right to live there and create a multi-million-person-strong refugee population roaming the world with no country?

Israel then asks to be recognized unconditionally. As you can read above, this too is a non-starter. They want security, but the pride issues always come first. Beforessecurity, before peace.

Now here's another issue. Who's got the power? Who calls the shots? The Israelis. Who's the underdog? Who is oppressed? Who is struggling to simply survive in the meanest sense? The Palestinians. In this situation, who bears the onus of responsibility to take the first risk, the first step, the first gamble? The stronger of the two: Israel. They've been hemming & hawing on this since... Square One. They've hung every Palestinian leader there since Day One. Every step toward peace is always a non-starter. As long as the power are powerful, there's no motive to be a risk-taker. Why lose it when you got it? Why take a chance?

Then, as Mr. Karon explains,

"The Arab autocrats whose presence is now required whenever Bush puts on one of his no-clothes shows recognize themselves in Abbas' predicament. They, too, have precious little to show their people in return for allying with Washington. Their citizenry, too, has watched them stand by helplessly as Washington has sanctioned and encouraged the systematic trampling of the Palestinians, the pulverizing of Lebanon, and the chaotic destruction of Iraq (which now produces a 9/11-equivalent death toll at least every few weeks). Those citizens, too, see that only the Islamists seem willing to stand up to the U.S. and Israel.

The autocrats, too, beg and plead with Washington to enforce a two-state solution based on Israel's 1967 borders and face the same smug dismissal of their concerns or the same meaningless ritual endorsements.

How many times do they have to be reminded by administration officials that President Bush was the first American leader to publicly call for a Palestinian state? Of course, he was also the first to formally endorse Israel's right to the massive settlements built in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law. "

With this background of oppression of most Arab and Muslim people by their own oppressive regimes backed by the U.S. & Western powers, it should be no surprise that they feel no love or trust for the US who has only showed them tyranny, never democracy or freedom, and who have only encouraged the dictators that oppress them. The one supposed "freedom fight" against Saddam Hussein looks more like a power-grab or oil-grab gone bad with "democracy" only as a cover story, one very very thin and unbelievable with zero credibility. Actions always speak stronger than words.


So Hamas takes over Gaza. It forms a threat. For the first time, Israel makes concessions. It's only a show, but it is something, I guess. But nobody really means or intends to do anything. Except Hamas, whose bloody takeover took everyone by surprise, but appears to the people in Gaza to at least have bolstered their pride, at least commanded a little respect. And since Israel offers nothing in the way of food, jobs, hope, or being treated as human beings with families, respect is a very big thing. Israel, take notice: R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Find out what it means to me - and every other Palestinian.

Then there's another bad issue - the Palestinian government and leadership itself is so corrupt, visibly corrupt and unjust, that it's far short of inspiring. The Hamas alternative looks better than the Fatah rich guys living off the largesse or God knows who while the rest of the people struggle right out there on the edge of existence.

I don't know what the solution really is, but it's not being found on Square One. It would help if both sides looked at the issue from the standpoint of being from the same species sharing resources on the same planet. Maybe then the movements toward negotiations, or what is left of such movements, would be less suicidal. But then, the responsible parties ain't gonna move until someone pushes them right there over the edge.

Oversimplify, oversimplify. Human beings are so damn complicated. And so is peace. So try using that internal organ stuck between the ears.

Democracy 101: We the People are Asleep at the Wheel

Bridgethought of the Day: Vigilance has to be a collective action - there's just too much for one person to see. One more argument for real democracy. Something the U.S. could use more of...

A movement to "Downsize DC" has been launched that cuts across party and other "invisible" lines. One of the most valuable aspects of this movement is the impetus to actually force our "representative" Congress to represent us - while doing their job - by actually reading, and discussing, the bills they pass which ultimately affect our lives more than we may realize. Unfortunately for us, many in power understand how Americans are too busy conducting their own lives to pay much attention to what Congress is doing. And what they are doing is not necessarily what it looks like.

For example, On July 11, Congress passed the Food and Drug Administration Administration Act (you read that correctly), which ran to an astonishing 308 pages. Health freedom advocates warn that this bill will turn the FDA into a public-private partnership with the ability to develop and patent drugs on its own.

They further warn this bill will jeopardize our access to vitamins and other nutritional supplements that compete with Big Pharma. But only forty minutes were allowed for debate, and amendments could not be proposed or considered. Instead of questioning this process, Congress rubber-stamped the bill with only 16 votes against it.

How many of the 403 who voted "yea" blindly followed the advice of lobbyists and Congressional leaders? How many then patted themselves on the back for "protecting" the American people from supposedly "dangerous" foods?

How many, if they actually read the bill, would have been appalled by some of the provisions, and demanded full debate and amendments? How many would have worked to defeat the bill?

We'll never know, because right now members of Congress aren't even required to read and understand the bills they pass. But when they rubber-stamps bills, they're not representing us. They may look busy, but they're not actually doing the job they were elected to do.We can change this. We can force Congress to pass the Read the Bills Act and make them do their job. You can learn more about the Read the Bills Act here.

We are actually responsible about this, too. It's not enough to simply vote for Representatives. We have to have a look at what they are doing, and what we really need and want to be done. And if we are supposed to be their bosses, it doesn't help that we don't seem to know or care what the hell they are doing. What happens when the driver falls asleep at the wheel?

You get Cheney-Bush, and the Constitution is about to crash. Will somebody start swerving away from that cliff???

Island America Meets the Killing Fields

Bridgethought of the Day: Hell on earth has a life of its own, like cancer, impervious to the needs or nature of its unwilling host. Welcome to the consequences of invasion. We are building a killing field.

Dahr Jamail, the great reporter on Iraq, has written an article describing the current situation in Iraq as having created schizophrenia - social schizophrenia - from living in two diametrically opposite worlds: the killing fields in Iraq, which have gone from horrors-come-true to gruesome constant survival failures; and the "Disneyland" bubble-world of the United States, or what I call "Island America". Here, as he so eloquently put it, we can simply mouseclick to another web page, essentially "eliminating" the "disturbance" of what really is going on in Iraq, and go back to our creature comforts and entertainment, distanced by this huge moat.

"In January 2004, I traveled through villages and cities south of Baghdad investigating the Bechtel Corporation's performance in fulfilling contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. In one village outside of Najaf, I looked on in disbelief as women and children collected water from the bottom of a dirt hole. I was told that, during the daily two-hour period when the power supply was on, a broken pipe at the bottom of the hole brought in "water." This was, in fact, the primary water source for the whole village. Eight village children, I learned, had died trying to cross a nearby highway to obtain potable water from a local factory.
In Iraq things have grown exponentially worse since then. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water and 80% "lack effective sanitation." This from Mr. Jamail's own experience. But you can sense more from an excerpt from an email sent to a friend of his from her friend in Iraq:

"I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids. Leaving the doors open is another terror story after the attack of the troops' vicious dogs on a ten-month old baby, tearing him apart and eating him in the same neighborhood just a few days ago. The troops let the dogs attack civilians. The dogs bite them and terrify the kids with their angry red eyes in the middle of the night. So, as you can see my dear Gerri, we don't have only one Abu Ghraib with torturing dogs, we have thousands of Abu Ghraibs all over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. "

This insightful article is prefaced by Tom Englehardt's reference to a breaking story in The Nation on how American soldiers in Iraq are both traumatized by the situation there and at the same time some of them are committing atrocities against civilians. You need to read it to really grasp all the consequences of our unnecessary and horrific decision to invade Iraq to "liberate" and "democratize" them against their will. Do we blame the soldiers or first blame the criminals in office who sent them there and then botched their mission by typical bureaucratic mismanagement and political lie-mongering?

Everything else I was thinking about came to a standstill when I read these articles. We are sitting here in comfort while on the other side of the world is hell on earth - made in the USA, planned and executed from the remote control comfort of America - Island America - nole mi tangere.

Immigration & Lou Dobbs' "I have a nightmare" Speech

Bridgethought of the Day: When the going gets emotional, the emotional get lost.

Two facts you must know, and know well:
Immigration is not just an "emotional hot-button issue" rated Rx, it is all about emotions. Those emotions are, to wit: a) fear; and b) terror.

Lou Dobbs has always been The Bastion of sound, sane, reliable, reasonable, & conservative advice on the one subject of prime concern among all conservatives, i.e., Money.

Add 1 + 2 and you get: 3. A blithering fool.

Yes, fear also has its chemistry - powerful stuff, that - and the neocons, as well as the traditiocons and establicons, are the alchemists, providing you plenty of fears to gnash your virtual teeth on well into the 43rd Century. But fortunately, they're saving you the $ & trouble by working hard to bring you Armageddon long before that - say, 2012 by my ... ah.. calculations.

But enough blabbering. Let's get right to the blithering, which, according to the price tag on Paris Hilton's trip-to-jail photo, is what we value most. You see, what turned our Financial Stability Hero, Lou Dobbs, into Hearts on Fire is Immigration, and almost everything morally wrong and disgusting emanates therefrom.

People give credit to our Congress in Inaction for the failure to come up with a solution to the Immigration Hot-Button Issue, but we should never dismiss the unfailing efforts of the tireless and indefatigable Lou Dobbs to deprive George Bush of even One Final Success to offset the failure of his War Without End Amen Policy.

His stirring "I Have a Nightmare" Speech certainly sets the stage for all Americans to work up a fear so intense it almost, but not quite, rivals the much-touted Fear of Death and Fear of the death of loved ones by starvation, or their torture by poverty and other disasters that are behind much of the "illegal aliens"' fight for legality, aka Immigration. So without further ado, here are some excerpts:

"I have a nightmare... that millions of illegal aliens are getting a free ride - and we're paying for it - instead of paying for the wars and weapons systems to which we, as a free society, are entitled... I have a nightmare ...

"That rampant illegality by illegal aliens will spill over and cause hard-working law-abiding citizens to rebel against the rampant injustice of it all, and break the law... starting with the laws enforcing taxes to be paid to the IRS...

"I have a nightmare ... that illegal aliens are taking countless jobs from law-abiding legal citizens, who are forced against their will to live as couch potatoes, drinking beer and watching 70's reruns when, were all illegal aliens eliminated by simply enforcing existing laws and building a 2,000-mile-long wall visible from space, those same couch potatoes could instead be breaking their backs picking potatoes in the fresh methane-infused air and living in squalid metal shacks so they could send a few measly dollars to their wives and kids in Chicago and Cincinnati where they can better fend off druglords and ... pay their taxes - instead of being sent down to Mexico and subsidizing a free ride for hungry women and children who pay no taxes to the United States... I have a nightmare...

"That illegal aliens are bringing more and more leprosy into this country and other horrifying diseases such as tuberculosis, smallpox, bubonic plague, and amebas, to name a few. .. and instead of spending more tax-n-spend liberal cash on health and human services, we could be spending them, as we should be, on more weapons systems, international war adventures, and cool killing games that we call "international policy" and "saving the world for democracy"... I have a nightmare...

"That the minimum wage will be reduced to $1.60/hour... that crowds of people will gather in the streets of ... of Boise, Idaho, and Cleveland, Ohio ... singing "Cielito Lindo" at soccer games ...the streets of America will be filled with people hawking Virgin Mary statuettes and a strange white cheese we can't understand that will give us diarrhea ... that honest, hard-working Americans will have to learn the meaning of "uprimez el ocho", whatever that means - I for one, have no intention to ever know what it means ... our children will experience the horrors of being - gag - bilingual ... and the water supply will have amebas ... I have a nightmare...

"That the IRS will go bankrupt, forcing us to resort to dealing with world problems on the cheap, with diplomacy ... I have a nightmare ...

"That without sufficient tax revenue, we'll be forced to outsource the entire President's cabinet, just to make ends meet ... and these, my friends, are the nightmare possibilities:

• The office of Secretary of State could be outsourced to the Dalai Lama;



• The Secretary of Treasury could be outsourced to the Sultan of Brunei - which, on the up side, could be a boon to gold futures, and perhaps the luxury auto industry;



• The Secretary of Defense could be outsourced to, imagine it, Kim Jung Il;



• The Secretary of the Interior could be outsourced to Prince Albert of Monaco;



• The Secretary of Labor could end up outsourced to Hugo Chavez;



• Secretary of Health and Human Services would be outsourced, probably, to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation;



• The Justice Department could be run by the Hague, or Amnesty International;



• The Secretary of Energy would be outsourced to Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia or even King Abdullah, whichever shows up first;



• The Secretary of Commerce would be outsourced to a Wal-Mart/China Consortium;



• NASA would have to be outsourced to Bert Rutan and Richard Branson; and



• The CIA would be run by the Mossad with secret black funding by unknown billionaires.

"I said, I have a nightmare... and if you read the Immigration Bill, you too would have nightmares... because everything in it is all about legalizing the illegal and inalienating the alien, and that's disgusting, because it's just plain wrong, financially unsound, and will destroy our tax base, and destroying our economy... instead of building more prisons and barbed wire and walls to protect our way of life and our American institutions of baseball and transfat pie and freedom fries and whataburgers that have no relationship with Austria..."

Fortunately, no one, not even Lou Dobbs, not even the U.S. Congress, not even, of course, Bush or his administration, has read the Immigration Bill because it's just too damned long... so it's lose-lose for the people who are dying in an effort to feed their families on the side of the border that has rampant millionaires flicking their cigarettes on hundred dollars bills just for laughs, or who think a gold-plated toilet isn't gross, as long as the Sultan of Brunei approves, just so long as those growing ranks of over-the-top rich folks don't get burned, let the aliens die, and keep them, certainly, illegal. Because it's legal to be cold-hearted and self-indulgent, certainly - but fighting for life in the desert is punishable by death, banishment, or an eternal place in the nightmare of Lou Dobbs...

So which fear wins in the Fear Wars, fear of death or the problems of poverty for one's family, or fear of alien cultures and free rides? We report, you decide, but remember...

Fear the snear.

Islam v. Theocracy

Bridgethought of the Day: Neocon strategy - If you can't win, hype some enemies.

It may seem incongruous to those taken in by the anti-Islamic hype, but Islam should be right there on the forefront of the fight against theocracy. Of course, Muslims themselves can be blamed for much of, albeit not all of, the bad rap, what with this Bush-touted "caliphate" thing and such well-known "Islamic" (sic) theocracies as Egypt (run by dictator/pharoah Mubarak) and Saudi Arabia, right down to the Sultan of Brunei. In fact, most of the Islamic world are run by brutal dictatorships, and the dictators set themselves up as demi-gods, claiming rights to the natural resources of their respective nations. But they have nothing to do with Islam as a religion, except insofar as they unfortunately claim to adhere to it.

Remember that Hitler claimed to adhere to Christianity, but no one ever called him a "Christo-fascist". His regime is a prime example of theocracy in action. He was the absolute leader, a demi-god. But whatever he was or did was never considered representative of Christianity. Even the Spanish Inquisition did not taint the name of Christendom the way a few terror cells have been used to characterize Islam.

The Qur'an actually demands freedom of religion: "No compulsion in religion." And "no" here means "forbidden", verboten, no can do. "Compulsion" means any kind of force or favoritism. And "religion" actually refers to a broader sense of "way of life". In fact, other ayat (verses) call for the best kind of language being used in discussion with those one disagrees with and no aggressive action against any person or group based only on their religion or lifestyle. No prohibition of music here. The basic rules mentioned in the Qur'an regarding dress do not mandate a "burqa" for all women, nor do they prohibit it. And there certainly should never be a "state religion" or "state sponsored religion" because this would be in direct disobedience to the above injunction.

People will ask, "What about the sharia?" First of all, the number of Muslims who really understand what the Sharia is are few and far between - so what about the non-Muslims world's impression about it, derived mostly from much-publicized radical views on it? There is much room for discussion and change in application of certain laws, contrary to the view of many. In fact, the Qur'an gives us this injunction: "The rule of law is (to be applied by) mutual discussion and agreement between you." And the "you" is not gender-specific, but is plural. This is certainly a directive towards democracy, not autocracy. And theocracy is autocratic, as are most "Muslim" rulers today. In fact, much of sharia law actually promotes human rights (e.g., women's property rights, anti-slavery recommendations, orphan's and children's rights, the rights of the disabled to some extent, and dispute-resolutions that favor the weaker party, etc.). The fact that rules do not adhere to most of their own religion's ethics reflects very badly on their societies.

In fact, Islam is almost impossible to be practiced in the world today in many Muslim countries. Many have come to the U.S. specifically in order to freely practice Islam. And since theocracy really means setting up the leader as a demi-god, this should be universally recognized by Muslims as anathema. For the U.S. not to make the extra effort to protect this first freedom at a time when it is under assault from all sides is unconscionable. And Muslims should join with all others, believers, non-believers, atheists, you name it, in protecting and promoting that basic right. The Qur'an really emphasizes the use of the mind. And in this case, I think all humans could work harder to put the sapiens in homo sapiens.