Thank you America!!
- Thread starter TM_Direct
- Start date
Gordon Gekko said:
Why do I get the creepy feeling $$mrmarket$$ is about to show us his 19" arms and demand we bring him our finest meats and cheeses?
This is your idea of objectivity?
http://www.anncoulter.org/default.htm
Coulter is a hatchet woman for the "right" ideological perspective, a feminazi, if you will.
It is one thing to believe one is right, it is quite another to project dogmatism and bile that others are wrong....and not only wrong but guilty of treason.
You have a strange perspective on what objectivity is.
What is best for the country is not always a black and white issue, but simple minds are attracted to cookie cutter ideologies that don't require thought, whether those ideologies are from the left, the right, or the middle.
Gee, why aren't I surprised AAA swallowed it all hook, line and sinker.
Birds of a feather.
Without debating the specifics of McCarthy -- not that anyone, democrat or republican should be afraid to do so -- it's interesting that AAA sees nothing wrong with labeling half of all Americans as traitors. That's typical Ann, and AAA's just lapping it up.
One of the better 'objective' sites I've found is http://www.spinsanity.org/ where libs and repubs both get their fair share.
Wow. Cool site. Thanks for the link Alfonso!
The tyranny of George II
John O'Farrell
Friday July 4, 2003
Among the brightly coloured bits of plastic at the bottom of a toy box I recently came across a little plastic doll. It was a miniature Barbie that had come free from McDonald's and in tiny writing on the back it said "Made In Vietnam". It left me wondering who'd actually won the Vietnam war. One generation endured the heaviest bombardment in history and succeeded in driving out the world's most powerful army in order that their children could be free to sit in a sweatshop making little Aryan Barbie dolls to be given out free with a Happy Meal.
Today is Independence Day in the United States, when Americans celebrate freedom from Britain. The final straw had been the enforcement of the Penal Acts, which had been passed so that 200 years later teenage boys would giggle in history lessons. If today's British government had found itself at war with the Americans it would have been very confused. "Er, right, but can we still be on the same side as you anyway?" Re-reading the Declaration of Independence makes you realise what far-sighted men those first American politicians were: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Oh, and the right to put American bases in over a hundred independent countries, organise fascist coups to install pro-American puppet regimes, stifle free trade if it's not in US economic interests and force children everywhere to watch a schmaltzy purple dinosaur called Barney."
But American imperialism is a lot more complex and subtle than the version its people threw off a couple of centuries ago. For example, they have ruthlessly taken over our cinemas with the calculated and cynical trick known as "making better films than we do". And the British computer industry could never really compete with Microsoft; tragically, that abacus factory has closed now. Sharing a language means our culture is even more open to colonisation. My laptop tells me "Your battery is running low" in an electronic Seattle accent. If French and German PCs talk in their own tongue, we should insist on no less. Computers sold in London should be programmed to talk like Cockneys: "Do wot mate, yer bleedin' batteries running Barley Mow, innit?" Dublin computers should say: "I'd say the old battery's running out there, but I shouldn't worry about it." And on the Isle of Wight, well, it's not an issue because they haven't got computers yet.
The US fashion industry spotted a gap in the market and put a Gap in every high street; Nike have got a big tick against every country in the world; and if you have a coffee machine in your home, then expect Starbucks to open a branch in your kitchen any day now. Indeed, with coffee being the second most important trading commodity after oil, how long until anti-war protesters are chanting: "No Blood For Cappuccinos"?
American interests are advanced by Nato, the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank and dozens of multinationals whose turnover is greater than the GDP of most countries. Indeed it won't be long before an American company organises the first leveraged buyout of a sovereign state. "Ladies and gentleman of the board, following a successful takeover bid, this company will now be known as Glaxo-Smith-Kline-Belgium. It gives us a seat on the European Union, a small army and an almost unlimited supply of yummy chocolates."
There is a certain irony that today the American empire is celebrating an essentially anti-imperialist event. But, outside it, July 4 is becoming the focus for a new campaign - a declaration of independence from America. Today at US bases in Britain, such as USAF Fairford in Gloucestershire or at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, parties will celebrate the idea that maybe one day we could live in a country that does not automatically assist in the star wars programme, does not send British troops in support of US foreign policy and where we are not forced to call Marathon bars "Snickers".
But being against US government policy should not be lazily extended to general anti-Americanism. If you're a US citizen please do not think I bear you any personal ill will (unless you yourself happen to be reading this, George W - which, let's face it, is unlikely, given the absence of pictures). So Happy Independence Day, America; you did a fantastic job throwing off the hereditary monarchy of George III. But now would it be okay if we declared independence from the hereditary presidency of George II?
John O'Farrell
Friday July 4, 2003
Among the brightly coloured bits of plastic at the bottom of a toy box I recently came across a little plastic doll. It was a miniature Barbie that had come free from McDonald's and in tiny writing on the back it said "Made In Vietnam". It left me wondering who'd actually won the Vietnam war. One generation endured the heaviest bombardment in history and succeeded in driving out the world's most powerful army in order that their children could be free to sit in a sweatshop making little Aryan Barbie dolls to be given out free with a Happy Meal.
Today is Independence Day in the United States, when Americans celebrate freedom from Britain. The final straw had been the enforcement of the Penal Acts, which had been passed so that 200 years later teenage boys would giggle in history lessons. If today's British government had found itself at war with the Americans it would have been very confused. "Er, right, but can we still be on the same side as you anyway?" Re-reading the Declaration of Independence makes you realise what far-sighted men those first American politicians were: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Oh, and the right to put American bases in over a hundred independent countries, organise fascist coups to install pro-American puppet regimes, stifle free trade if it's not in US economic interests and force children everywhere to watch a schmaltzy purple dinosaur called Barney."
But American imperialism is a lot more complex and subtle than the version its people threw off a couple of centuries ago. For example, they have ruthlessly taken over our cinemas with the calculated and cynical trick known as "making better films than we do". And the British computer industry could never really compete with Microsoft; tragically, that abacus factory has closed now. Sharing a language means our culture is even more open to colonisation. My laptop tells me "Your battery is running low" in an electronic Seattle accent. If French and German PCs talk in their own tongue, we should insist on no less. Computers sold in London should be programmed to talk like Cockneys: "Do wot mate, yer bleedin' batteries running Barley Mow, innit?" Dublin computers should say: "I'd say the old battery's running out there, but I shouldn't worry about it." And on the Isle of Wight, well, it's not an issue because they haven't got computers yet.
The US fashion industry spotted a gap in the market and put a Gap in every high street; Nike have got a big tick against every country in the world; and if you have a coffee machine in your home, then expect Starbucks to open a branch in your kitchen any day now. Indeed, with coffee being the second most important trading commodity after oil, how long until anti-war protesters are chanting: "No Blood For Cappuccinos"?
American interests are advanced by Nato, the IMF, the WTO, the World Bank and dozens of multinationals whose turnover is greater than the GDP of most countries. Indeed it won't be long before an American company organises the first leveraged buyout of a sovereign state. "Ladies and gentleman of the board, following a successful takeover bid, this company will now be known as Glaxo-Smith-Kline-Belgium. It gives us a seat on the European Union, a small army and an almost unlimited supply of yummy chocolates."
There is a certain irony that today the American empire is celebrating an essentially anti-imperialist event. But, outside it, July 4 is becoming the focus for a new campaign - a declaration of independence from America. Today at US bases in Britain, such as USAF Fairford in Gloucestershire or at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, parties will celebrate the idea that maybe one day we could live in a country that does not automatically assist in the star wars programme, does not send British troops in support of US foreign policy and where we are not forced to call Marathon bars "Snickers".
But being against US government policy should not be lazily extended to general anti-Americanism. If you're a US citizen please do not think I bear you any personal ill will (unless you yourself happen to be reading this, George W - which, let's face it, is unlikely, given the absence of pictures). So Happy Independence Day, America; you did a fantastic job throwing off the hereditary monarchy of George III. But now would it be okay if we declared independence from the hereditary presidency of George II?
What Is Happening in America?
By Eliot Weinberger
This article, one of the best short analyses of the Bush administration's policies, was published by "Vorwarts," Germany.
First Published 08 June 2003
In the Western democracies in the last fifty years, we have grown accustomed to governments whose policies on specific issues may be good or bad, but which essentially institute incremental changes to the status quo. The major exceptions have been Thatcher and Reagan, but even their programs of dismantling systems of social welfare seem, in retrospect, mild compared to what is happening in the United States under George Bush-- or more exactly, the ruling junta that tells Bush what to do and say.
It is unquestionably the most radical government in modern American history, one whose ideology and actions have become so pervasive, and are so unquestionably mirrored by the mass media here, that the population seems to have forgotten what "normal" is.
George Bush is the first unelected President of the United States, installed by a right-wing Supreme Court in a kind of judicial coup d'etat. He is the first to actively subvert one of the pillars of American democracy: the separation of church and state. There are now daily prayer meetings and Bible study groups in every branch of the government, and religious organizations are being given funds to take over educational and welfare programs that have always been the domain of the state.
Bush is the first president to invoke the specific "Jesus Christ" rather than an ecumenical "God," and he has surrounded himself with evangelical Christians, including his Attorney General, who attends a church where he talks in tongues.
It is the first administration to openly declare a policy of unilateral
aggression, a "Pax Americana" where the presence of allies (whether England or Bulgaria) is agreeable but unimportant; where international treaties no longer apply to the United States; and where-- for the first time in history-- this country reserves the right to non-defensive, "pre-emptive" strikes against any nation on earth, for whatever reason it declares.
It is the first-- since the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II-- to enact special laws for a specific ethnic group. Non-citizen young Muslim men are now required to register and subject themselves to interrogation. Many hundreds have been arrested and held without trial or access to legal assistance-- a violation of another pillar of American democracy: habeas corpus. Many have been taken from their families and deported on minor technical immigration violations; the whereabouts of many
others are still unknown. And, in Guantanamo Bay, where it is said that they are now preparing execution chambers, hundreds of foreign nationals -- including a 13-year-old and a man who claims to be 100-- have been kept for almost two years in a limbo that clearly contravenes the Geneva Convention.
Similar to the Reagan era, it is an administration openly devoted to helping the rich and ignoring the poor, one that has turned the surplus of the Clinton years into a massive deficit through its combination of enormous tax cuts for the wealthy (particularly those who earn more than a million dollars a year) and increases in defence spending. (And, although Republicans always campaign on "less government," it has created the largest
new government bureaucracy in history: the Department of Homeland Security.) The Financial Times of England, hardly a hotbed of leftists, has categorized this economic policy as "the lunatics taking over the asylum."
But more than Reagan-- whose policies tended to benefit the rich in general-- most of Bush's legislation specifically enriches those in his lifelong inner circle from the oil, mining, logging, construction, and pharmaceutical industries. At the middle level of the bureaucracy, where laws may be issued without congressional approval, hundreds of regulations have been changed to lower standards of pollution or safety in the
workplace, to open up wilderness areas for exploitation, or to eliminate the testing of drugs.
Billions in government contracts have been awarded, without competition, to corporations formerly run by administration officials. In a country where the most significant social changes are enacted by court rulings, rather than by legislation, the Bush administration has been filling every level of the complex judicial system with ultra-right ideologues, especially those
who have protected corporations from lawsuits by individuals or
environmental groups, and those who are opposed to women's reproductive rights. It remains to be seen how far they can push their antipathy to contraception and abortion. They have already banned a rare form of late-term abortion that is only given when the health of the mother is endangered or the fetus is terribly deformed, and a large portion of Bush's heralded billions to Africa to fight AIDS will be devoted to so-called "abstinence" education.
Most of all, America doesn't feel like America any more. The climate of militarism and fear, similar to any totalitarian state, permeates everything. Bush is the first American president in memory to swagger around in a military uniform, though he himself-- like all of his most militant advisers-- evaded the Vietnam War. (Even Eisenhower, a general and a war
hero, never wore his uniform while he was president).
In the airports of provincial cities, there are frequent announcements in that assuring, disembodied voice of science-fiction films: "The Department of Homeland Security advises that the Terror Alert is now . . . Code Orange." Every few weeks there is an announcement that another terrorist attack is imminent, and citizens are urged to take ludicrous measures, like sealing their windows, against biological and chemical attacks, and to report the suspicious activities of their neighbours.
The Pentagon institutes the "Total Information Awareness" program to collect data on the ordinary activities of ordinary citizens (credit card charges, library book withdrawals, university course enrollments) and when this is perceived as going too far, they change the name to "Terrorist Information Awareness" and continue to do the same things. Millions are listed in airport security computers as potential terrorists, including antiwar
demonstrators and pacifists. Critics are warned to "watch what they say" and lists of "traitors" are posted on the internet.
The war in Iraq has been the most extreme manifestation of this new America, and almost a casebook study in totalitarian techniques.
First, an Enemy is created by blatant lies that are endlessly repeated until the population believes it: in this case, that Iraq was linked to the attack on the World Trade Centre, and that it possesses vast "weapons of mass destruction" that threaten the world.
Then, a War of Liberation, entirely portrayed by the mass media in terms of our Heroic Troops, with little or no imagery of casualties and devastation, and with morale-inspiring, scripted "news" scenes-- such as the toppling of the Saddam statue and the heroic "rescue" of Private Lynch-- worthy of Soviet cinema.
Finally, as has happened with Afghanistan, very little news of the chaos that has followed the Great Victory. Instead, the propaganda machine moves on to a new Enemy-- this time, Iran.
It is very difficult to speak of what is happening in America without resorting to the hyperbolic clichés of anti-Americanism that have lost their meaning after so many decades, but that have now finally come true.
Perhaps one can only recite the facts, and I have mentioned only some of them here. This is, quite simply, the most frightening American administration in modern times, one that is appalling both to the left and to traditional conservatives. This junta is unabashed in its imperialist ambitions; it is enacting an Orwellian state of Perpetual War; it is dismantling, or attempting to dismantle, some of the most fundamental tenets of American democracy; it is acting without opposition within the government, and is operating so quickly on so many fronts that it has overwhelmed and exhausted any popular opposition.
Perhaps it cannot be stopped, but the first step toward slowing it down is the recognition that this is an American government unlike any other in this country's history, and one for whom democracy is an obstacle
© Copyright 2003
By Eliot Weinberger
This article, one of the best short analyses of the Bush administration's policies, was published by "Vorwarts," Germany.
First Published 08 June 2003
In the Western democracies in the last fifty years, we have grown accustomed to governments whose policies on specific issues may be good or bad, but which essentially institute incremental changes to the status quo. The major exceptions have been Thatcher and Reagan, but even their programs of dismantling systems of social welfare seem, in retrospect, mild compared to what is happening in the United States under George Bush-- or more exactly, the ruling junta that tells Bush what to do and say.
It is unquestionably the most radical government in modern American history, one whose ideology and actions have become so pervasive, and are so unquestionably mirrored by the mass media here, that the population seems to have forgotten what "normal" is.
George Bush is the first unelected President of the United States, installed by a right-wing Supreme Court in a kind of judicial coup d'etat. He is the first to actively subvert one of the pillars of American democracy: the separation of church and state. There are now daily prayer meetings and Bible study groups in every branch of the government, and religious organizations are being given funds to take over educational and welfare programs that have always been the domain of the state.
Bush is the first president to invoke the specific "Jesus Christ" rather than an ecumenical "God," and he has surrounded himself with evangelical Christians, including his Attorney General, who attends a church where he talks in tongues.
It is the first administration to openly declare a policy of unilateral
aggression, a "Pax Americana" where the presence of allies (whether England or Bulgaria) is agreeable but unimportant; where international treaties no longer apply to the United States; and where-- for the first time in history-- this country reserves the right to non-defensive, "pre-emptive" strikes against any nation on earth, for whatever reason it declares.
It is the first-- since the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II-- to enact special laws for a specific ethnic group. Non-citizen young Muslim men are now required to register and subject themselves to interrogation. Many hundreds have been arrested and held without trial or access to legal assistance-- a violation of another pillar of American democracy: habeas corpus. Many have been taken from their families and deported on minor technical immigration violations; the whereabouts of many
others are still unknown. And, in Guantanamo Bay, where it is said that they are now preparing execution chambers, hundreds of foreign nationals -- including a 13-year-old and a man who claims to be 100-- have been kept for almost two years in a limbo that clearly contravenes the Geneva Convention.
Similar to the Reagan era, it is an administration openly devoted to helping the rich and ignoring the poor, one that has turned the surplus of the Clinton years into a massive deficit through its combination of enormous tax cuts for the wealthy (particularly those who earn more than a million dollars a year) and increases in defence spending. (And, although Republicans always campaign on "less government," it has created the largest
new government bureaucracy in history: the Department of Homeland Security.) The Financial Times of England, hardly a hotbed of leftists, has categorized this economic policy as "the lunatics taking over the asylum."
But more than Reagan-- whose policies tended to benefit the rich in general-- most of Bush's legislation specifically enriches those in his lifelong inner circle from the oil, mining, logging, construction, and pharmaceutical industries. At the middle level of the bureaucracy, where laws may be issued without congressional approval, hundreds of regulations have been changed to lower standards of pollution or safety in the
workplace, to open up wilderness areas for exploitation, or to eliminate the testing of drugs.
Billions in government contracts have been awarded, without competition, to corporations formerly run by administration officials. In a country where the most significant social changes are enacted by court rulings, rather than by legislation, the Bush administration has been filling every level of the complex judicial system with ultra-right ideologues, especially those
who have protected corporations from lawsuits by individuals or
environmental groups, and those who are opposed to women's reproductive rights. It remains to be seen how far they can push their antipathy to contraception and abortion. They have already banned a rare form of late-term abortion that is only given when the health of the mother is endangered or the fetus is terribly deformed, and a large portion of Bush's heralded billions to Africa to fight AIDS will be devoted to so-called "abstinence" education.
Most of all, America doesn't feel like America any more. The climate of militarism and fear, similar to any totalitarian state, permeates everything. Bush is the first American president in memory to swagger around in a military uniform, though he himself-- like all of his most militant advisers-- evaded the Vietnam War. (Even Eisenhower, a general and a war
hero, never wore his uniform while he was president).
In the airports of provincial cities, there are frequent announcements in that assuring, disembodied voice of science-fiction films: "The Department of Homeland Security advises that the Terror Alert is now . . . Code Orange." Every few weeks there is an announcement that another terrorist attack is imminent, and citizens are urged to take ludicrous measures, like sealing their windows, against biological and chemical attacks, and to report the suspicious activities of their neighbours.
The Pentagon institutes the "Total Information Awareness" program to collect data on the ordinary activities of ordinary citizens (credit card charges, library book withdrawals, university course enrollments) and when this is perceived as going too far, they change the name to "Terrorist Information Awareness" and continue to do the same things. Millions are listed in airport security computers as potential terrorists, including antiwar
demonstrators and pacifists. Critics are warned to "watch what they say" and lists of "traitors" are posted on the internet.
The war in Iraq has been the most extreme manifestation of this new America, and almost a casebook study in totalitarian techniques.
First, an Enemy is created by blatant lies that are endlessly repeated until the population believes it: in this case, that Iraq was linked to the attack on the World Trade Centre, and that it possesses vast "weapons of mass destruction" that threaten the world.
Then, a War of Liberation, entirely portrayed by the mass media in terms of our Heroic Troops, with little or no imagery of casualties and devastation, and with morale-inspiring, scripted "news" scenes-- such as the toppling of the Saddam statue and the heroic "rescue" of Private Lynch-- worthy of Soviet cinema.
Finally, as has happened with Afghanistan, very little news of the chaos that has followed the Great Victory. Instead, the propaganda machine moves on to a new Enemy-- this time, Iran.
It is very difficult to speak of what is happening in America without resorting to the hyperbolic clichés of anti-Americanism that have lost their meaning after so many decades, but that have now finally come true.
Perhaps one can only recite the facts, and I have mentioned only some of them here. This is, quite simply, the most frightening American administration in modern times, one that is appalling both to the left and to traditional conservatives. This junta is unabashed in its imperialist ambitions; it is enacting an Orwellian state of Perpetual War; it is dismantling, or attempting to dismantle, some of the most fundamental tenets of American democracy; it is acting without opposition within the government, and is operating so quickly on so many fronts that it has overwhelmed and exhausted any popular opposition.
Perhaps it cannot be stopped, but the first step toward slowing it down is the recognition that this is an American government unlike any other in this country's history, and one for whom democracy is an obstacle
© Copyright 2003
Geez - what happened to you, Optional? For weeks you've been pleading for centrist, objective approaches, and now you're c&p-ing harsh polemical attacks on the Bush administration - now adding an article translated from Vorwaerts, the party publication of Germany's SPD (Social-Democratic Party of Germany). Now you seem to be operating as chief ET research aid for msfe and Alfonso.
The author has no difficulty stooping to outright lies in pursuit of his attempt to paint the US as a totalitarian or crypto-totalitarian state. He claims, for instance, that there has been no coverage in the US of the "chaos" that has followed the military victory in Iraq, when even the casual observer of American media knows that the opposite is the case, with all major newschannels and newspapers doggedly pursuing the theme while largely neglecting Iraq stories that don't play into it.
On the basis of this ridiculous assertion, the author pushes the claim that the purpose of this (non-existent) news blackout is to allow the evil neocons to move unencumbered onto the next target, supposedly Iran. No serious individual believes that the US is planning major military operations in Iran: Though the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities has been discussed by some as a last resort option, nothing like the "regime change" operations in Afghanistan and Iraq is being contemplated by anyone with a realistic assessment of actual US military capabilities (or interests). Or are we to assume that the author is a staunch supporter of the Iranian mullahs, and that even mere verbal statements in support of the Iranian opposition represent some Hitlerian scheme of conquest?
It's not just lousy propaganda, it's also rather distasteful coming from you or anyone on the 4th of July.
The author has no difficulty stooping to outright lies in pursuit of his attempt to paint the US as a totalitarian or crypto-totalitarian state. He claims, for instance, that there has been no coverage in the US of the "chaos" that has followed the military victory in Iraq, when even the casual observer of American media knows that the opposite is the case, with all major newschannels and newspapers doggedly pursuing the theme while largely neglecting Iraq stories that don't play into it.
On the basis of this ridiculous assertion, the author pushes the claim that the purpose of this (non-existent) news blackout is to allow the evil neocons to move unencumbered onto the next target, supposedly Iran. No serious individual believes that the US is planning major military operations in Iran: Though the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities has been discussed by some as a last resort option, nothing like the "regime change" operations in Afghanistan and Iraq is being contemplated by anyone with a realistic assessment of actual US military capabilities (or interests). Or are we to assume that the author is a staunch supporter of the Iranian mullahs, and that even mere verbal statements in support of the Iranian opposition represent some Hitlerian scheme of conquest?
It's not just lousy propaganda, it's also rather distasteful coming from you or anyone on the 4th of July.
June 27, 2003, 8:45 a.m.
Old and in the Way
The American Street has sized up best the new paradoxes of foreign policy.
by Victor Davis Hanson
The events following 9/11 created an "empire" industry â millions of words written by pundits claiming that by intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq America was now a hegemon. The charge was that we are a world bully of sorts, intent on controlling the globe and ignoring the admonitions of more sober folk like the Europeans.
Yet even as university professors and consultants cling to such regurgitated and discredited postcolonial theories and Chomskyite drivel, the American profile abroad has made such conventional exegesis obsolete. In fact, we are adopting a radically new world role that defies conventional analysis as either imperialist or isolationist.
During this entire crisis tired voices of convention have misunderstood the nature of this war and the temporary presence of Americans in exotic places like the Asiatic provinces of the former Soviet Union, the Gulf, or Kurdistan. Instead of seeing such deployments in their proper context of ad hoc military efficacy and reaction to 9/11, they have instead shrilly alleged some sinister conspiracy to harness the world's oil through the use of permanent military deployment abroad and perpetual war.
Fools! The real danger is not that we are interventionists, but rather are on the verge of a weird insularity not seen since the 1920s â a paradox of still being engaged abroad but not in the usual manner of the past. The American Street is in a strangely revolutionary â read "fed-up" â mood. It is growing distant from Europe. It is angry with the Arab world especially, and it is tired with South Korea â and most whiny nations that either take billions of dollars in direct American aid or ankle-bite under the aegis of American arms.
The result is while hothouse analysts in Paris and spoiled teenagers in Seoul with Reeboks and football jerseys damn America the imperialist, the United States they knew is changing right before their eyes in ways that they might not like in the next decade â but that will in fact relieve most Americans.
***
Thanks to such critics, millions of us have now come to the conclusion that after a half century of American support, thousands of American dead, and billions of dollars in aid, it is perhaps time to let the rich South Koreans protect themselves and be weaned from the American military. We gave them their country; now on the 50-year anniversary of the armistice, let them keep â or lose â it. Yes, let them, not 20-year-old young men and women from Des Moines and Missoula, find out whether their own Sunshine Policy really works. Having us defend them in perpetuity from a bankrupt third-world country would be somewhat like asking them to come over here to defend our own porous border with Mexico.
Oh, in explanation of our radical new redeployment, we will profess that the nature of war itself has changed or that it signals no cooling in our relationship. In fact, anytime American soldiers risk their life on a trip-wire vulnerable to 10,000 cannon while their benefactors march in the street against such a courageous presence and their corrupt politicians talk of a third way, it is long time to come home. Under the present radical mood in America, redeployment is the stale option â complete withdrawal along the Philippines or Panama model being the more preferred solution.
***
Two years ago those of us who called for removing soldiers from Saudi Arabia were derided by an assortment of ex-diplomats and various think-tank apparatchiks funded by Gulf money. But most Americans are delighted at the idea â and are beginning to ask further why one dime of American money goes to a Palestine Authority that is as murderous as it is venal, or to an Egypt â or even Jordan â whose citizens have killed Americans while its unelected "moderate" leaders have chastised rather than thanked us for the billions of dollars received.
A quarter-century of subsidies created the "Korean disease" in Cairo and Amman â and it is perhaps time to alter all our unquestioning Middle East relationships with monarchs and dictators as well. The long-term outlook for Iran looks more hopeful than for Egypt â and our State Department and Middle Eastern experts should take a deep breath and ask why that is so. Principled resistance seems to bear more fruit than sending Abrams tanks to Mr. Mubarak or pretending that the Palestine Authority is a responsible government. A subsidized Jordan â the darling of our State Department â should now decide whether it belongs to the past or future Middle East, and then be treated accordingly. A charismatic young Westernized autocrat or his globe-trotting American step-mother does not necessarily ensure that his kingdom is either stable or friendly.
What is going on? After the defeat of the Axis and the long containment of the Soviet Union, the beneficiaries of past American sacrifices find their new identities in part by mouthing cheap anti-Americanism without cost. Fine; it's a free world. But they forget that the Middle East, the DMZ, Cyprus, the Balkans, the former provinces of the Soviet Union, the world's oil lanes, the shrines and icons of the West in Europe, all that and more thousands of miles from our own coasts can all blow up in their faces â and that we no longer can, or should, alone guarantee that they won't.
Our concern instead is to clean up Afghanistan and Iraq, warn Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to change â or else â and then hunt down every last al Qaedist. And for now our own war against terror is plenty enough to worry about â especially when it is being won on the battlefield without a great deal of help from our bases in Turkey and Saudi Arabia and with a lot of criticism from allied hosts from Germany and Greece to Okinawa and South Korea.
So what accounts for this sudden paradox of independent action abroad while becoming ever more skeptical of traditional alliances?
The general public at last understands this post-Cold War teenager syndrome â that perpetual dependency creates envy and jealousy. After all, we would find it strange if our own American teenagers were to wear German T-shirts, play French music, and watch Belgian videos as they painted anti-European graffiti on our walls and their parents in New York sued Chirac or Kohl for European criminal neglect in the Balkans. Our own senators and representatives do not engage in German bashing while the Luftwaffe has 100 jets parked outside of Washington protecting our eastern seaboard. It all reminds me of a Greek hotelier â replete with American Ray-bans and Eminem blaring in his portable CD player â this week who snapped at me that Americans were all over the globe sticking their noses in the business of innocent others like poor Mr. Milosevic â but lamentably not as tourists coming to Greece as in the past.
There is common ground between liberals and conservatives to start downsizing from places like Saudi Arabia, Germany, South Korea, Turkey, and as much of Western Europe as possible. The former either fear the label of imperialism or, as in the case of the Gulf, don't like us propping up corrupt governments. The latter are more hard-headed, and see only increasing costs â political, monetary, psychological â with decreasing benefits.
The real global story is not "anti-Americanism," but perhaps a growing American weariness with strident allies and the braggadocio of pathetic Middle Eastern despotisms. If I were a functionary of the European Union, I would either have an emergency meeting right now to explore ways of stemming a rising, grassroots tide of Middle America's anger against Europe or alternatively allot 400 or 500 billion Euros per annum for its own unilateral and collective defense. We in America are waiting for sober Europeans to question their current frightening leadership that came of age in 1968, but now shrug that the Schroeders, Fischers, and Villepins may not be so aberrant after all. The EU, remember, is now being asked by Mr. Abbas on the West Bank to stop subsidizing Hamas.
So in response, what should we do?
Keep quieter and carry a far bigger stick. Methodically and politely transfer, redeploy, and reduce troops from countries that have opposed our efforts of the past two years or whose populations simply profess no overt support for the United States. Seek real friends â the fewer the better â in Eastern Europe, on the Black Sea, or around the Gulf who want American troops as a reflection of genuine mutual security needs, appreciate the economic stimulus such bases provide, and quite simply like the United States.
***
Thousands of influential Americans in Washington and New York, revolving in and out of government on a perpetual basis, at home, on the networks, and in newspapers, will resist all such reappraisals tooth and nail. It is not just that their foundations receive money from a variety of foreign and domestic special interests, or that they enjoy flying to Brussels, or being courted in Georgetown by diplomats â or liked being liked.
It is less dramatic than all that. Instead, a change to a new muscular autonomy for conventional policymakers simply represents an entire paradigm shift, an acceptance that their world has been turned upside down after September 11.
You see, their old way of doing business is now both old and in the way.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson062703.asp
Old and in the Way
The American Street has sized up best the new paradoxes of foreign policy.
by Victor Davis Hanson
The events following 9/11 created an "empire" industry â millions of words written by pundits claiming that by intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq America was now a hegemon. The charge was that we are a world bully of sorts, intent on controlling the globe and ignoring the admonitions of more sober folk like the Europeans.
Yet even as university professors and consultants cling to such regurgitated and discredited postcolonial theories and Chomskyite drivel, the American profile abroad has made such conventional exegesis obsolete. In fact, we are adopting a radically new world role that defies conventional analysis as either imperialist or isolationist.
During this entire crisis tired voices of convention have misunderstood the nature of this war and the temporary presence of Americans in exotic places like the Asiatic provinces of the former Soviet Union, the Gulf, or Kurdistan. Instead of seeing such deployments in their proper context of ad hoc military efficacy and reaction to 9/11, they have instead shrilly alleged some sinister conspiracy to harness the world's oil through the use of permanent military deployment abroad and perpetual war.
Fools! The real danger is not that we are interventionists, but rather are on the verge of a weird insularity not seen since the 1920s â a paradox of still being engaged abroad but not in the usual manner of the past. The American Street is in a strangely revolutionary â read "fed-up" â mood. It is growing distant from Europe. It is angry with the Arab world especially, and it is tired with South Korea â and most whiny nations that either take billions of dollars in direct American aid or ankle-bite under the aegis of American arms.
The result is while hothouse analysts in Paris and spoiled teenagers in Seoul with Reeboks and football jerseys damn America the imperialist, the United States they knew is changing right before their eyes in ways that they might not like in the next decade â but that will in fact relieve most Americans.
***
Thanks to such critics, millions of us have now come to the conclusion that after a half century of American support, thousands of American dead, and billions of dollars in aid, it is perhaps time to let the rich South Koreans protect themselves and be weaned from the American military. We gave them their country; now on the 50-year anniversary of the armistice, let them keep â or lose â it. Yes, let them, not 20-year-old young men and women from Des Moines and Missoula, find out whether their own Sunshine Policy really works. Having us defend them in perpetuity from a bankrupt third-world country would be somewhat like asking them to come over here to defend our own porous border with Mexico.
Oh, in explanation of our radical new redeployment, we will profess that the nature of war itself has changed or that it signals no cooling in our relationship. In fact, anytime American soldiers risk their life on a trip-wire vulnerable to 10,000 cannon while their benefactors march in the street against such a courageous presence and their corrupt politicians talk of a third way, it is long time to come home. Under the present radical mood in America, redeployment is the stale option â complete withdrawal along the Philippines or Panama model being the more preferred solution.
***
Two years ago those of us who called for removing soldiers from Saudi Arabia were derided by an assortment of ex-diplomats and various think-tank apparatchiks funded by Gulf money. But most Americans are delighted at the idea â and are beginning to ask further why one dime of American money goes to a Palestine Authority that is as murderous as it is venal, or to an Egypt â or even Jordan â whose citizens have killed Americans while its unelected "moderate" leaders have chastised rather than thanked us for the billions of dollars received.
A quarter-century of subsidies created the "Korean disease" in Cairo and Amman â and it is perhaps time to alter all our unquestioning Middle East relationships with monarchs and dictators as well. The long-term outlook for Iran looks more hopeful than for Egypt â and our State Department and Middle Eastern experts should take a deep breath and ask why that is so. Principled resistance seems to bear more fruit than sending Abrams tanks to Mr. Mubarak or pretending that the Palestine Authority is a responsible government. A subsidized Jordan â the darling of our State Department â should now decide whether it belongs to the past or future Middle East, and then be treated accordingly. A charismatic young Westernized autocrat or his globe-trotting American step-mother does not necessarily ensure that his kingdom is either stable or friendly.
What is going on? After the defeat of the Axis and the long containment of the Soviet Union, the beneficiaries of past American sacrifices find their new identities in part by mouthing cheap anti-Americanism without cost. Fine; it's a free world. But they forget that the Middle East, the DMZ, Cyprus, the Balkans, the former provinces of the Soviet Union, the world's oil lanes, the shrines and icons of the West in Europe, all that and more thousands of miles from our own coasts can all blow up in their faces â and that we no longer can, or should, alone guarantee that they won't.
Our concern instead is to clean up Afghanistan and Iraq, warn Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to change â or else â and then hunt down every last al Qaedist. And for now our own war against terror is plenty enough to worry about â especially when it is being won on the battlefield without a great deal of help from our bases in Turkey and Saudi Arabia and with a lot of criticism from allied hosts from Germany and Greece to Okinawa and South Korea.
So what accounts for this sudden paradox of independent action abroad while becoming ever more skeptical of traditional alliances?
The general public at last understands this post-Cold War teenager syndrome â that perpetual dependency creates envy and jealousy. After all, we would find it strange if our own American teenagers were to wear German T-shirts, play French music, and watch Belgian videos as they painted anti-European graffiti on our walls and their parents in New York sued Chirac or Kohl for European criminal neglect in the Balkans. Our own senators and representatives do not engage in German bashing while the Luftwaffe has 100 jets parked outside of Washington protecting our eastern seaboard. It all reminds me of a Greek hotelier â replete with American Ray-bans and Eminem blaring in his portable CD player â this week who snapped at me that Americans were all over the globe sticking their noses in the business of innocent others like poor Mr. Milosevic â but lamentably not as tourists coming to Greece as in the past.
There is common ground between liberals and conservatives to start downsizing from places like Saudi Arabia, Germany, South Korea, Turkey, and as much of Western Europe as possible. The former either fear the label of imperialism or, as in the case of the Gulf, don't like us propping up corrupt governments. The latter are more hard-headed, and see only increasing costs â political, monetary, psychological â with decreasing benefits.
The real global story is not "anti-Americanism," but perhaps a growing American weariness with strident allies and the braggadocio of pathetic Middle Eastern despotisms. If I were a functionary of the European Union, I would either have an emergency meeting right now to explore ways of stemming a rising, grassroots tide of Middle America's anger against Europe or alternatively allot 400 or 500 billion Euros per annum for its own unilateral and collective defense. We in America are waiting for sober Europeans to question their current frightening leadership that came of age in 1968, but now shrug that the Schroeders, Fischers, and Villepins may not be so aberrant after all. The EU, remember, is now being asked by Mr. Abbas on the West Bank to stop subsidizing Hamas.
So in response, what should we do?
Keep quieter and carry a far bigger stick. Methodically and politely transfer, redeploy, and reduce troops from countries that have opposed our efforts of the past two years or whose populations simply profess no overt support for the United States. Seek real friends â the fewer the better â in Eastern Europe, on the Black Sea, or around the Gulf who want American troops as a reflection of genuine mutual security needs, appreciate the economic stimulus such bases provide, and quite simply like the United States.
***
Thousands of influential Americans in Washington and New York, revolving in and out of government on a perpetual basis, at home, on the networks, and in newspapers, will resist all such reappraisals tooth and nail. It is not just that their foundations receive money from a variety of foreign and domestic special interests, or that they enjoy flying to Brussels, or being courted in Georgetown by diplomats â or liked being liked.
It is less dramatic than all that. Instead, a change to a new muscular autonomy for conventional policymakers simply represents an entire paradigm shift, an acceptance that their world has been turned upside down after September 11.
You see, their old way of doing business is now both old and in the way.
http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson062703.asp