America's war on itself

[CHIMO]

have a persistent mental image of US foreign policy, which haunts me even in my sleep. The vanguard of a vast army is marching around the globe, looking for its enemy. It sees a mass of troops in the distance, retreating from it. It opens fire, unaware that it is shooting its own rear.

Is this too fanciful a picture? Both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were groomed and armed by the United States. Until the invasion of Iraq, there were no links between the Ba'athists and al-Qaida: now Bush's government has created the monster it claimed to be slaying. The US army developed high-grade weaponised anthrax in order, it said, to work out what would happen if someone else did the same. No one else was capable of producing it: the terrorist who launched the anthrax attacks in 2001 took it from one of the army's laboratories. Now US researchers are preparing genetically modified strains of smallpox on the same pretext, and with the same likely consequences. The Pentagon's space-based weapons programme is being developed in response to a threat which doesn't yet exist, but which it is likely to conjure up. The US government is engaged in a global war with itself. It is like a robin attacking its reflection in a window.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in its assaults on the multilateral institutions and their treaties. Listening to some of the bunkum about the United Nations venting from Capitol Hill at the moment, you could be forgiven for believing that the UN was a foreign conspiracy against the United States. It was, of course, proposed by a US president, launched in San Francisco and housed in New York, where its headquarters remain. Its Universal Declaration of Human Rights, characterised by Republicans as a dangerous restraint upon American freedoms, was drafted by Franklin D Roosevelt's widow. The US is now the only member of the UN security council whose word is law, with the result that the UN is one of the world's most effective instruments for the projection of American power.

The US has every right to beat itself up. But unfortunately, while chasing itself around the world, it tramples everyone else. I know that appealing to George Bush's intelligence isn't likely to take us very far, but surely there's someone in that administration who can see what a monkey he's making of America.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1377970,00.html

[WeirdHoward]

1. We see the same thing in the culture war

So much attention has been drawn to the teacher in Cupertino, CA, evangelizing in his history class. He made his own supplementary materials, which edit in every reference to God or Jesus he could find, apparently, to teach that this country was meant to be a theocracy.
The right keeps coming up with stories and they try to portray themselves as the victims. "There's a war on Christmas," etc, etc, I'm sure you have heard or read about this culture war. This is a manufactured war, by the right, trying to portray themselves as victims. The bad guys? Yes, you guessed it, the ACLU, and other groups defending the Bill of Rights.
This is a non-issue, guys and gals, and let's keep it that way. Agree to go on the snipe hunt with the righties. They'll be embarrassed to reveal that the snipe is a made up critter. Make sure that they expend more energy than you. That's the game. It's a lie, and the work the liar does keep the lie alive takes more energy and money, than the people who keep driving him/her to manufacture more "evidence." The truth will always prevail. Just don't let the righties rest on their win in 2004. Keep the fire under their tooshies.

Best wishes for a Merry Christmas,
and a Blessed Yule to all,

El Weirdo

[Demeter]

2. The Last Paragraph is the Knife in the Gut

"The US has every right to beat itself up. But unfortunately, while chasing itself around the world, it tramples everyone else. I know that appealing to George Bush's intelligence isn't likely to take us very far, but surely there's someone in that administration who can see what a monkey he's making of America. "


Alas, no, there isn't.