Letters to the Editor
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Bush and the Mideast
Apparently we have a new foreign policy: "Stop doing this shit".
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re: Bush and the Mideast
Apparently we have a new foreign policy: "Stop doing this shit".
Actually, that would be a pretty good policy, if it were directed at the U.S.
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This just in...
The United Nation's Human Rights experts have just chastised the U.S. in regards to human rights. It was quite a feat, but the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld fascism machine has done wonders. We've gone from a human rights world leader to an embarassment in only a few short years. I'd say that Bush's version of Freedom is marching strong!
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Freedom at the end of a gun?
To quote Mr. Grieve "The president wasn't the only one feeling optimistic then. As Slate's Fred Kaplan wrote at the time, what seemed like a string of foreign policy successes had even "the blue states of America" wondering whether Bush had been right all along..."
Only an idiot would have thought these events foreign policy successes. Tributes to the mailed fist of America's military power and America's military-industrial complex and financial power, maybe, but not foreign policy. One thing that one must understand is that one can coerce peoples with superior military power but if one does not address and solve the underlying tensions, dissatisfactions, aspirations etc, the results will prove ephemeral. They will last only as long as the military coersion is present.
History tells us that things must be worked out by the people on the ground. The people who live there (wherever "there" is) must ultimately decide how they are going to get along, or not as the case may be. Ultimately, this is the real power of the people. And it is quite long lived. A few modest examples may help.
Starting sometime in the 20s or 30s depending on how you look at it, the Soviet Union, citing the inevitability of Marxism, began peddling their brand of government. Communism was a siren song for many peoples who were suffering the effects of financial debacle and the lingering effects of a horrific war. Early on, their brand sold well and with little effort. Thirty years later, it wasn't selling so well and they resorted to subversion and outright military take over. Within the next thirty years, the blow back happened and now, forty years on, Marxism as a form of government has all but vanished. The Soviet Union was simply unable to make a sale without coersion and as soon as their military power waned so did the sales.
A somewhat different perspective can be learned from the fate of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This empire melted in the furnace of World War I. Indeed, the nationalistic and sectarian tensions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are widely considered to be the proximate causes of the war. For the Austro-Hungarian Empire you can read Central Europe or, as the news media had it in earlier times, the Eastern Bloc. The interwar years were a time of experimentation with a newly found freedom from the heavy hand from Vienna. Then came World War II and the heavy hand of communism brought to them by Moscow. In the end, however, the tensions, dissatisfactions, aspirations, etc of the people had not been addressed. What have we seen happen? As soon as the Soviet Union had dissipated its wealth on foolish foreign adventures and a foolish pusuit of military might, Central Europe broke free. The last twenty years have been an excercise in Central Europe's efforts to sort things out amongst themselves as they had been doing 80 years earlier during the interwar years. Montenegro's recent decision to form it's own country, almost 100 years after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1914, should be ample evidence that the mailed fist solves nothing.
So what of Mr. Bush's smoke screen he calls "bringing democracy to the world"? Well, as soon as we have dissipated our wealth on foolish foreign adventures and a foolish pusuit of military might, we, too, will lose our coercive powers and the world will go back to trying to sort itself out based on its desires as opposed to ours. Unless, of course, some other bully - like China - decides to make a big stick. History tells us that no country with the big stick - Germany, The Soviet Union, The United States - is willing to obey the laws governing the relations among nations as espoused by the UN because they don't have to and nobody can make them.
And what of the oceans of American blood spilt in this most recent foreign adventure? Well, Mother Earth will always receive her children back to her bosom. That will pretty much be the sum total of the benefits - most mothers like to see their children once they're grown. Until we learn that, outside of defending ourselves (sorry, Iraq doesn't qualify) against someone who's like we've become, the use of coersion is a dead end street, Presidents will continue to start wars, Generals will continue to fight wars, and Privates will continue to die in wars.
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How was that?
He is either an Optimist or stupid, or just maybe both. He sure brought peace like no other warmonger before him!