Supplementary » November 18, 2004
Where will America stand in the world?
Cheer Up, Blue America!
- What’s on the media agenda?
By David Brock - Where will America stand in the world?
By Chalmers Johnson - How can we fight for working families?
By John J. Sweeney - What issues should Democrats focus on?
By Rep. Nancy Pelosi - What strategy should the Democrats pursue?
By Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. - How can women fight back?
By Marie Wilson - How should we redirect our political creativity?
By Al Jourgensen - How can we keep young voters engaged?
By Farai Chideya
The world changed on November 2, 2004. Until then, ordinary citizens of the United States could claim that our foreign policy, including our invasion of Iraq, was George Bush’s doing and that we had not voted for him. In 2000, Bush lost the popular vote. This time he won it by more than 3.5 million votes. The result is that Bush’s war has changed into America’s war.
Regardless of what the American people intended, they are now seen to have endorsed torture of captives at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, at Bagram Air Base in Kabul and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; a rigged economy based on record-setting trade and fiscal deficits; the greatest reliance on secrecy of any postwar American government; the replacement of international law with preventive war; an epidemic of nuclear proliferation; and many other aberrations that can only elicit hostile and defensive reactions in all other nations of the world.
It makes no difference that a majority of U.S. voters seemed to regard November 2 as “An Electoral Affirmation of Shared Values,” the title of a front-page article by Todd Purdum in the November 4 New York Times. According to a survey that a consortium of all the major news agencies in the country conducted on Election Day, the American public put “moral values” ahead of the economy, terrorism, Iraq, healthcare, taxes and education as the “issue that mattered most.”
This signifies to the rest of the world that Americans are not so different from the jihadists surrounding Osama bin Laden. Both groups are Paradise-seeking fanatics beyond the appeals of reason. They are totalitarians in the strictest meaning of the word. The only sensible thing to do is to try to hold them at bay with the threat of nuclear retaliation, as Iran, North Korea and many other nations are doing today. The thought that American policy is being made by religious fundamentalists may well drain all legitimacy from virtually everything the United States tries to do in the world.
The last significant check on the imperial presidency was the electorate, and on November 2 it failed. Neither the Congress, nor the courts, nor the federalist system of state governments is any longer able to balance the presidency and the forces of militarism. We now know that something more than the working of the political system will be required to save the American republic. The catastrophe of November 2 may mobilize the people to act directly. In the coming months I expect to see an anti-war movement in the United States that will dwarf the demonstrations of the Vietnam era, and I expect to contribute to it in every way I can.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Chalmers Johnson is the author of the Blowback Trilogy. The first two books of which, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, and The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic—are now available in paperback. The third volume is being written.
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Reader Comments
My parents taught me to not care what other people think about you ,do what you think is right. The old adage if all your friends jumped off the bridge would you jump too comes to mind. Kerry really lost the election on the misguided assumption that America needed to pass the “global test” before we did anything. I think that true leadership is acting on your convictions, doing what you think is right and and after taking counsel from people you trust make a decision and stick too it. America needs to be a leader and not really care about what France thinks. America is the world’s leader not the follower.
Posted by redstate on Nov 18, 2004 at 12:13 PM
How can one begin to respond to such a post? How can one puncture such pious platitudes?
You speak about your parents teachings - think about that for a moment. Did your parents also not teach you that there might be times when what you THINK is right, turns out NOT to be right?
Sometimes when your friends offer you advice, they have your best interests at heart. Sometimes they may be wiser than you are and worth listening to. Perhaps, as in the case of France in Algeria and Vietnam, they have been through their own wars of aggression, and they know the folly & futility of fighting a nation of insurgents.
It is George Bush & his neo-con advsiors who have “jumped off the bridge” - with their arrogant & disastrous war in Iraq. But, unfortunately, they have taken all of us with them.
We are now responsible for the deaths of perhaps 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. And with the destruction of Falluja, America now has its own “Guernica”, which will be remembered by millions of Muslims for hundreds of years.
Although many Americans like to think they are the center of the universe, the fact is that we are not alone on this planet. What we do and what our country does affects the lives of millions of people around the globe.
True leadership is taking wise counsel, building strong alliances, & conducting a foreign policy that safeguards Americans & the rest of the world. John Kerry never said that America needed to pass a “global test”. That is a complete distortion of his words. John Kerry understands that for America to be a leader in the world, it must return to the moral high ground rather than unilaterally pursuing a perverted, narrow vision of its own national interest.
Posted by Karen Dickes on Nov 18, 2004 at 1:52 PM
sorry about seeming to produce a pious platitude. i assure you I am no holy man! of course you listen to counsel you respect in major decisions that is common sense. The mind should not be an impenetrable wilderess. Maybe Kerry never said that we need to pass a global test verbatim but that is what in my unsophisticated mind I got from him. I as a semi- conservative am concerned about this war. I am not sure 100% I am comfortable with this war and I apolgize to all the people who are in harms way while I sit here on my comfortable ass and write this display of uncertainty. I hope everbody comes home safe and not one more life is lost . But that is not realistic to hope for. two sides- one war -how many solutions can there be?
Posted by redstate on Nov 18, 2004 at 2:12 PM
I don’t believe showing leadership means indiscriminately bombing a nation to shreds and sending our military off on some hopeless expedition. Anyone can do that. Leadership is a far more complex process that involves:
1) Clear understanding of the situation now
2) Critically examining evidence and seeing what actions should be taken. And understanding the permutations of that action.
3) Looking at all sides and listening to all parties. Also caring for alliances.
4) Making a decision that will benefit the most people, and will compensate those who are at a disadvantage.
5) Confidence building so that local solutions are possible.
(I’m brainstorming here, but it’s a good issue, and I have seen a lot of this done in very large enterprises, and could go on and on).
George W. Bush has broken every rule of good leadership. He enmbarked on a war on false premises, without a clear exit strategy (his dad was far better in this venture) and without thinking the consequences through (a good talk with France might have helped, the French have a lot of experience with the Arab world).
In fact, redstate, the reason why Americans are so frightened of terrorism, even though the neocons purport to be winning the war on terror, is because as a collective the country realizes it is leaderless at this point. The Bush agenda in Iraq is not the war on terror. What he is telling his voters is not what he is doing, and people FEEL that. There is a gaping discrepancy there. That is where the insecurity comes from.
Many people knew that the USA would run into major problems in Iraq because of ethnic and religios divisions. Many of us predicted a civil war there if the Americans invaded. Even Wolfowitz admitted he had not predicted such resistance. So the question remains: Why are we there? Answer: Because the Bush people have another agenda. I don’t think it is only oil. It has to do with power. At home. In the US of A. It’s a straight ploy, nothing more: Keep the electorate insecure, in fear, and chip away at rights. It’s been done so often before, I cannot believe people still fall for it.
(Compare, for example, the Roosevelt agenda in world war two: Read the Four Freedoms speech (I think it was delivered in January 1940, nearly a year before war was declared). That outlined FDR’s agenda. It was a thinly veiled justification for going to war. But he was addressing everyone. People knew where they stood. They also knew that they had a leader. They had no need to fear.)
Posted by Talleyrand on Nov 18, 2004 at 4:45 PM
I guess in my try to be optimistic about the human race I guess I am prety naive about peoples motives. I would hate to believe that there was an ulterior motive to something as definitive as going to war where thousands will be killed and a country decimated. i do believe that Bush was misled terribly and made decisions based on that misinformation. Do I think that his intelligence might have been bad due to maybe Iraqi factions that for their own reasons wanted Hussein out of power- absolutely. your outline of leadership is on the money i believe but variables and human frailties/ulterior motives can have an devestating effect on decisions. The best way is to have actually have gone to Iraq and seen what is going on and the UN tried to do that but there seemed to be an effort on the part of Hussein to stifle those efforts. Like I said i try to be the eternal optimist and I would really hate to think of all those peolpe killed and wounded over less than honorable intentions even if the road to hell is paved with them.
Posted by redstate on Nov 18, 2004 at 5:32 PM
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