Yet Saddam Hussein is generally seen as a tyrant who needs to be disarmed, and the UN Security Council has unanimously demanded that he disclose and destroy his weapons of mass-destruction. What has gone wrong?
Nothing.
The Bush doctrine is built on two pillars: first, the United States will do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremacy and, second, the United States arrogates the right to preemptive action. Taken together, these two pillars support two classes of sovereignty: the sovereignty of the United States which takes precedence over international treaties and obligations and the sovereignty of all other states which is subject to the Bush doctrine. This is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm: all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
"The US will do everything in its power to maintain its unquestioned military supremcy" is
1 - An exageration. It certainly does not and has not done everything in its power to keep down other countries.
2 - Mostly about the US keeping its own military powerful, which is not abusive to any other country.
3 - Justified to some extent in some cases.
all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
Yes. The abusive dictatorial regime of a third world country with a history of dropping chemical weapons on its own people and invading neighboring countries in order to conquer them or large sections of them, and that has violated its cease fire agreement with the US and UN is not the equal of the US.
"The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise."
This statement is false on two counts. First, there is no single, sustainable model for national success. And second, our model, which has been successful, is not available to others because our success depends greatly on our dominant position at the center of the global capitalist system and that position is not attainable by others.
The statment is true. First democracy and free markets, along with the rule of law and a good general degree of freedom, together amount to the best road to success available. The specifics and the timing (for example - do you open up the economy first or concentrate on political reform first?) are different, but the general ideas are the road to sucess. Also the sucess does not require domienence. Europe, Japan, Australia, South Korea and others have followed this road to success.
But President Bush makes absolutely no allowance for the possibility that we may be wrong and he has no tolerance for dissenting opinion. If you are not with us you are against us, he proclaims.
About fighting terrorism. And it isn't "if you don't agree with us and support us 100% on all our ideas and about all of our tactics then you are against us.
Donald Rumsfeld berates our European allies who disagree with him on Iraq in no uncertain terms
And their officals berate us, and each other. One can reasonably argue that Rumsfeld should be more diplomatic sometimes but that doesn't mean the US is setting itself up as the ruler of the world, or demanding that every other country do whatever our government says.
The ideology combines market fundamentalism in economic matters
No the Bush administration's ideology is far from market "fundamentalism" in economic matters. I wish it was a bit closer but its closer to the democrat's ideas about the economy then it is to laissez faire.
and the pursuit of military supremacy in international relations. These two objectives fit neatly together into a coherent ideology—an ideology that is internally consistent but not consistent with reality or with the principles of open society.
Trying to have the most powerful military in the world makes sense if its a dangerous world and if it is an easily achievable goal; and a free market ideology is the economic idea most consistant with the principles of an open society.
Tim |
