You are right to be scared! (part 1) Posted on March 24, 2003 at 19:25:31 by Leon
Let us not be harsh on our friend Bendito! Actually, I am convinced on reading his posts, that he is a TRULY scared American who cannot admit it: his world is falling apart, but he is resisting 'waking up'! Waking up, he fears, will be too much of a shock for him. His safe world of simple truths, is falling apart. He cannot rationalise it. He has to create imaginary ghosts to explain it. Bendito, keep posting, we read you, but do not be afraid to SEARCH, QUESTION. Your assumptions all your life that you, the White Anglo Saxon Protestant have been RIGHT and others are WRONG, your black and white vision of the world, consider that it may have been fed you by a worse enemy than you can imagine, right in your own back yard.
I offer the following analysis as proof of the veracity of what our HONESTLY 'Scared American' friend has posted:
Iraq: A War Already Lost? By Zulfiqar Ahmad and Peter Hayes
March 19, 2003
The United States has embarked on its first full-fledged battle in a war guided by the Bush doctrine. Our enemies, President Bush declared when he delivered his ultimatum to Iraq, are "terrorists and terror states" who can attack us without "fair notice."
"Responding to such enemies only after they have struck first is not self-defense," he asserted, "it is suicide." With this assertion, Bush set in motion a new American security strategy that envisions many anticipatory battles in an effort to secure the United States against terrorist threats, and to indefinitely maintain its predominant position in the world.
The United States may have already lost the long-term, global war that President Bush unleashed tonight. His victory in Iraq may be swift. But America suffered significant setbacks in its global anticipatory war even before the first bombs fell. It deeply alienated longstanding allies. It drove away many of its best ambassadors--the millions of immigrants and foreign students who carried the American dream to every corner of the world. It ceded political space to militant Islamists, who are organizing anti-war protests in Muslim countries and now will move from the wings to political center stage. Its actions accelerated recruitment to extreme, violent groups. In Pakistan, pictures of Osama bin Laden, complete with garlands, jostle with posters saying 'No War on Iraq'.
American Hegemony Abandoned
The Bush Administration has not only squandered the enormous sympathy generated by the September 11 atrocity. It has exhausted in a few years muchost of the moral capital earned by American leadership in the twentieth century. For the last half century, the world lived under American hegemony that was based at least in part on consent grounded in legitimacy and rule of law, not just fear flowing from the exercise of military power.
Now, the US has subverted even the most fundamental principle of state sovereignty which emerged over 350 years ago as a result of the Treaty of Westphalia. The concept of state sovereignty was further reinforced in the United Nations charter of 1945 which is "based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its Members."
If respect has been eroded, trust seems non-existent - there are few nations now that trust America to keep its word; the sad sight of Hamid Karzai in Washington urging the US to keep the promises it made was just one example; Turkey's demand that American aid be paid upfront another, as is the constant fear in Pakistan that it will be 'betrayed' by the US soon. The current Administration's unquestioning and absolute support of Israel's increasingly brutal occupation of the Palestinians has in may peoples mind stripped President Bush of any moral authority to speak of democracy, human rights, fair play or the sanctity of UN resolutions. Its refusal to talk with North Korea is inexplicable. And now war on Iraq.
The United States has dug itself into a deep hole by attacking Iraq. Whether fast or slow, military victory may make the hole even deeper. If it knocks off Saddam Hussein quickly and easily, then the Bush Administration may feel dangerously confident that it can move onto other battles in short order. Next in line are Iran and North Korea.
But these two target countries are fundamentally different than Iraq. Iran has a vibrant civil society, a government that enjoys legitimacy, a strong army, and, as it demonstrated in its long war with Iraq, a will to fight. North Korea has a totalitarian government, a nuclear-armed ally, and in a military confrontation can destroy Seoul and destabilize the whole region. Iraq may be easy to occupy. Assuredly, Iran and North Korea will not.
The Bush doctrine may prove to be very short-lived when it collides with less brittle and much stronger small states than Iraq. When and if it collides with big states engaged in their own anticipatory wars, say Russia in Central Asia or China in Taiwan, the Bush doctrine will evaporate.