More
Matrix Masters
Blogs
World Events
US News
Science & Health
Earth News
Free Speech
News from Africa
News from Palestine
Bill of Rights Under Attack

Matrix Masters'
SUPPORTERS

Lorenzo's
Random Musings
. . . about Chaos,
Reason, and Hope

 

Waging War: Bush's impossible dream
(William S. Lind, United Press International, March 18, 2003)
President George W. Bush is dreaming the impossible dream. In his effort to ensure lasting American global leadership in the 21st century, he has so far only succeeded in isolating his own country from its traditional allies and supporters around the world. . . . the administration in Washington has isolated itself from several of its oldest allies, provoked a serious split in NATO, and left itself very much on the defensive in the face of an inspections process that continues to find no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- and thus no causus belli, or justification for war for the United States. . . . Is this simply ineptitude, or is something larger going on here? I suggest the latter. For some time, elements in the administration have been looking far beyond Iraq. They have spoken with increasing openness about re-making the entire Middle East, installing "democratic" governments that would be friendly not only to the United States but to Israel. . . . America is to become not just "the only superpower" but a "hyperpower" which no one can hope to resist. China is to be cowed by an arms race she cannot afford; non-state elements will fall to American Special Forces; the U.N. will be a tool of American world dominance. . . . America will be the New Britain, perhaps the New Rome. Or, more likely, the New Spain. The Spanish analogy is not one most Americans will know, nor one the new Wilsonians will much care for. But it may prove apt. . . . What finally stopped Hapsburg Spain and, later, France under King Louis XIV and Napoleon and Germany under Hitler from establishing the universal monarchy was a fundamental characteristic of the international state system: whenever one nation attempts to attain world dominance, it pushes everyone else into a coalition against it. . . . That dynamic, not any love for Saddam, is what is behind German and French opposition to the Bush administration's plan for war with Iraq. That is what is drawing others, including Russia, into supporting the French and the Germans. . . . The real question is not whether the American drive for world hegemony will succeed; it will not. The question is why we are attempting it in the first place.

posted by LoZo 4:41 PM