NOW WE'RE ALL UGLY AMERICANS
By Gary LaMoshi
atimes.com
"As an American, I'm filled with pride... [Even] a numbskull can grow up ... to become president."
DENPASAR, Bali - For US citizens living overseas, President George W Bush's unilateral ultimatum to Iraq makes us all ugly Americans. We were potential targets for terror and abuse, like our fellow citizens back home; now we are representatives of the world's leading bully. Our flag, which stood for the hopes of humankind now stands for disdain for diplomacy in favor of military intimidation.
As they say in the cartoons, "Thanks a lot, George, thanks a lot."
It remains an incredible feat that the United States has forfeited all of the world's goodwill it won after the September 11, 2001, attacks, barely 18 months ago, and legitimized the view that Bush, not Saddam Hussein, not Osama bin Laden, not Kim Jong-il, is the greatest threat to world peace. It's hard to imagine a term for a US attack on Iraq, as threatened by Bush, except for "terrorism".
Speechless; if only he was, too
When our friends ask us why the US wants to attack Iraq, we don't have any better answers than the weak, shifting case the Bush administration offers. Its arguments lack credibility, just like the president himself and his policies.
I used to think that Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa had the worst ear for public relations of any leader on the world stage. But Bush topped him easily with Monday night's naked threat with the same sensitivity shown when he declared his war on terrorism a "crusade".
First, Bush demanded, "Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours." Only an idiot would have included the reference to "sons" given the perception that this President Bush is finishing Poppy's war. Moreover, Dubya owes his presidency largely to the Florida governorship of his brother Jeb, the supposedly more clever son of a Bush. Jeb didn't have the popularity or political skills to ensure his brother could win the vote in Florida, but his control of the administrative processes guaranteed that the votes in Florida wouldn't get counted properly. The US Supreme Court, packed with Poppy Bush's acolytes, endorsed Jeb's subterfuge.
Then, Bush warned Iraqi troops, "Do not blow up oil wells", even before he admonished them not to deploy weapons of mass destruction, ostensibly what this war is about. He added that the wells are "a source of wealth for the Iraqi people". Let's see how that statement plays downstream as US oil companies swoop in to drill with equipment from Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's former employer.
If there were two terms that Bush shouldn't have evoked in his speech, they were "sons" and "oil". Naturally, he did. As an American, I'm filled with pride. Indeed, a numbskull can grow up (provided he's in the right family) to become president.
Putting the dip in diplomacy
If there was a third word Bush should have avoided, it was "diplomacy". Bush's ultimatum is the result of the failure of US diplomacy, not just in gaining support for its wrong-headed attack on Iraq, but for its overall goals. Rather than using the United States' unique position as the world's only superpower to create a better world, the Bush administration's goal centers on world domination. "You're either with us or against us" is its mantra. To expect the rest of the world to help the US pick up the pieces of the mess it makes in Iraq is a dream.
No matter how much lipstick the White House's right-wing ideologues put on this pig, there is no denying that the administration has short-circuited an inspection process that renders Iraq militarily impotent and unable to threaten its neighbors. The war clique has failed to demonstrate a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda or to find a smoking gun regarding weapons of mass destruction, at least any developed without the complicity of the US during the Iran-Iraq war, when Saddam Hussein and Donald Rumsfeld were pals.
While the French have proved to be nearly as much of a caricature as the US leadership has, they make an important point, as have the millions of protesters around the globe: vigorous inspections would accomplish the goal of disarmament.
Instead, the US has opted for a military attack, underscoring the point that the Bush people don't want to disarm Iraq (this time, they stopped the process, not Saddam Hussein), they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein. The argument, echoed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, that US troops have gone too far to turn back, is ridiculous on the face of it. Restraint from strength wins respect while bullying wins approbation.
If the US can demand "regime change" in Iraq, why shouldn't other countries insist on deposing an illegitimately seated leader who unleashes war on innocent people in defiance of diplomacy and world opinion, based on radical religious beliefs and ideology? In short, why shouldn't regime change begin at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
History lesson
The vision of re-creating Iraq as model of Middle Eastern democracy is a pipe dream, either an exercise in cynicism or self-delusion, qualities the Bush administration has shown in vast quantities with its economic policy that has turned a comfortable budget surplus into a huge deficit, all the time denying that US$1 trillion in tax cuts tilted heavily toward the wealthy have anything to do with the fiscal reversal.
The White House, which pledged to rebuild Afghanistan after bombing it out of the Stone Age a year and a half ago, neglected to put a dime for that nation's reconstruction into its budget for this year. There is no reason to believe that the Bush people will show any greater interest and staying power in the equally difficult and more dangerous business of rebuilding Iraq.
Moreover, a quick browse through US history shows that no Republican administration has ever found the right way to end a war. We don't know what Abraham Lincoln would have done after the US Civil War, but his successors failed to reunify the nation effectively and, except for a brief interlude, secessionist racial politics held sway in the former Confederacy for the next 100 years. Theodore Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the Russo-Japanese War, but he couldn't stop the insurrection in the Philippines; indeed, it took a Japanese invasion to get the US out of its bush war there. Dwight Eisenhower's Korean War armistice, without a real peace, set the stage for Kim Jong-il's nuclear blackmail today. Despite their war crimes, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger couldn't win the Vietnam War, leaving it to Gerald Ford to strike the colors on the US Embassy in Saigon as communist forces marched in. President Bush I shied away from finishing off the Iraqi regime in the first Gulf War, leaving the uneasy situation that has persisted for the past dozen years. The current Bush people have neither the diplomatic savvy nor the experience of their failed predecessors.
An attack on Iraq without any credible threat to US security will make the world a more dangerous place for Americans at home and overseas. It is already the best recruiting tool al-Qaeda could wish for, and it will make it far more difficult for the United States to advance its legitimate interests diplomatically in the foreseeable future. The Bush administration has forfeited the high ground in foreign policy for generations for reasons it still cannot articulate convincingly.
As an expatriate, I often feel compelled to wave the American flag and defend our core values. But this decision to attack Iraq undermines those values of democracy, responsibility and working for a peaceful and just world. I hang on the thin reed that someone with some sense will stop this madness before the US betrays everything it should stand for and proves its worst critics absolutely correct.
More immediately, I hope that my neighbors will make the distinction between American values and the outlaw administration currently running the country. That would take subtlety of thought and degrees of wisdom that the people in the White House lack. |
