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America's way - Bush's new doctrine is deaf to history
(The Guardian, September 24, 2002)
The whole world, Mr Bush argues, is "increasingly united by common values" and "common interests"- and these values and interests, it transpires, are America's own. He recasts humanity's entire history as a struggle between an absolute, Founding Father-style concept of freedom and "war, terror, poverty... and the evil designs of tyrants". Mr Bush (and advisers such as Condoleezza Rice) find, unsurprisingly, that America is uniquely equipped to fight and finally win this battle. After the defeat of communism and fascism, the US represents the "single sustainable model for national success", declares this philosopher-president. He deems it "our common calling" and a proud "mission". And like it or not, we are all putative, co-opted Americans now, or else non-persons, to be sustained by a US-tilted "balance of power that favours freedom" and protected by America's "unparalleled military strength". This Bush doctrine is by turns arrogant, patronising, complacent, amazingly presumptuous - but above all, aggressive. It brooks no opposition. It will tolerate no perceived threat. In the world according to George Bush, an irresistible America, convinced of its rightness and its altruism, always decides. Fatally, but in the true, naive American tradition, this doctrine is deaf to history, oblivious to consequences, and wondrously lacking in self-knowledge. . . . It marks the moment when the US, shifting up from superpower to hyperpower, unveiled the new age of the have-a-nice-day totalitarians. It's official: the US rules the world.

posted by LoZo 5:19 PM