As Others See Us
by Meteor Blades
Wed Nov 03, 2004 at 11:39:50 PM PDT
As we Kossians rack up zillions of words about what went wrong and argue about what to do next and how to do it, foreign columnists are weighing in with their take on second-term Bush. Neo-conservatism is much on their minds. A couple of examples:
Jonathan Freedland from the Guardian writes:
Jonathan Freedland from the Guardian writes:
This is no passing phase. This is now an era
Those outside America, in the chanceries of Europe and beyond, who hoped that this would be a passing phase, like a Florida hurricane that wreaks havoc only to blow over, will instead have to adjust to a different reality.
For four years many hoped that the course charted by President Bush - a muscular go-it-alone view of a world divided between the forces of darkness and those of light - would prove to be a blip. Come November 2, 2004, they wanted to believe, normal service would be resumed. The United States would return to the old way of doing business, in concert with allies and with respect for the international system the US itself had done so much to create. The norms of foreign policy pursued by every president from Roosevelt to Clinton, including the first George Bush, would be revived. Senator Kerry promised as much.
Now that fantasy will be shelved. The White House is not about to ditch the approach of the last four years. Why would it? Despite the mayhem and murder in Iraq, despite the death of more than 1,000 US soldiers and countless (and uncounted) Iraqis, despite the absence of weapons of mass destruction, despite Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration won the approval of the American people. If Bush had lost the neo-conservative project would have been buried forever. But he won, and the neo-cons will welcome that as sweet vindication.
So it will be full steam ahead. "There are real threats that have to be dealt with," Danielle Pletka of the impeccably neo-con American Enterprise Institute told the Guardian yesterday. Iran would not go away - indeed, Ms Pletka warned, "force might be the only option" - nor would North Korea. "We can't all pretend that the world would be a prettier place if only George W Bush was not the president."
There were plenty of people around the globe who used to think precisely that way, hoping that the past four years were a bad dream which would end yesterday. Now they have to navigate around a geopolitical landscape in which President Bush is the dominant, fixed feature.
And Pepe Escobar at Asia Times says:Those outside America, in the chanceries of Europe and beyond, who hoped that this would be a passing phase, like a Florida hurricane that wreaks havoc only to blow over, will instead have to adjust to a different reality.
For four years many hoped that the course charted by President Bush - a muscular go-it-alone view of a world divided between the forces of darkness and those of light - would prove to be a blip. Come November 2, 2004, they wanted to believe, normal service would be resumed. The United States would return to the old way of doing business, in concert with allies and with respect for the international system the US itself had done so much to create. The norms of foreign policy pursued by every president from Roosevelt to Clinton, including the first George Bush, would be revived. Senator Kerry promised as much.
Now that fantasy will be shelved. The White House is not about to ditch the approach of the last four years. Why would it? Despite the mayhem and murder in Iraq, despite the death of more than 1,000 US soldiers and countless (and uncounted) Iraqis, despite the absence of weapons of mass destruction, despite Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration won the approval of the American people. If Bush had lost the neo-conservative project would have been buried forever. But he won, and the neo-cons will welcome that as sweet vindication.
So it will be full steam ahead. "There are real threats that have to be dealt with," Danielle Pletka of the impeccably neo-con American Enterprise Institute told the Guardian yesterday. Iran would not go away - indeed, Ms Pletka warned, "force might be the only option" - nor would North Korea. "We can't all pretend that the world would be a prettier place if only George W Bush was not the president."
There were plenty of people around the globe who used to think precisely that way, hoping that the past four years were a bad dream which would end yesterday. Now they have to navigate around a geopolitical landscape in which President Bush is the dominant, fixed feature.
Damn politics, let's dance
The United States may have gone to the polls as a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation. Today it's still a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation, but now with a clear mandate for the state really to rock the geopolitical boat.
The "most important election of a lifetime" has sent a clear message to the whole world: the face of America in the next four years - barring a Richard Nixon-style impeachment - will be of unilateralism, the "war on terror" possibly progressively escalating into a clash of civilizations. And pay attention to the "axis of evil" hit list - the official and the bootleg. Bush II will attack what it defines as "state terrorism" - Iran, Syria - instead of the global jihadi network. It will continue to rely on Pakistan to "decapitate" the odd "high-value al-Qaeda". It won't engage in diplomacy to address the political causes of terrorism. It won't engage in a cultural and ideological effort to try to counteract the global jihad - especially now that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have changed the rules of the asymmetrical game from a religious clash to a political struggle against imperialism.
Total concentration of right-wing power - legitimized by the popular vote: this is the new neo-conservative dream turned reality. So the road ahead is to flatten the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah in Iraq, bomb Iran because of its supposed nuclear aspirations, depose President Hafez Assad in Syria, crush the Palestinian resistance, and remodel the Middle East by "precision strike" democracy.
There will be serious blowback.
The United States may have gone to the polls as a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation. Today it's still a divided, uncertain, paralyzed-by-fear nation, but now with a clear mandate for the state really to rock the geopolitical boat.
The "most important election of a lifetime" has sent a clear message to the whole world: the face of America in the next four years - barring a Richard Nixon-style impeachment - will be of unilateralism, the "war on terror" possibly progressively escalating into a clash of civilizations. And pay attention to the "axis of evil" hit list - the official and the bootleg. Bush II will attack what it defines as "state terrorism" - Iran, Syria - instead of the global jihadi network. It will continue to rely on Pakistan to "decapitate" the odd "high-value al-Qaeda". It won't engage in diplomacy to address the political causes of terrorism. It won't engage in a cultural and ideological effort to try to counteract the global jihad - especially now that Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri have changed the rules of the asymmetrical game from a religious clash to a political struggle against imperialism.
Total concentration of right-wing power - legitimized by the popular vote: this is the new neo-conservative dream turned reality. So the road ahead is to flatten the Sunni stronghold of Fallujah in Iraq, bomb Iran because of its supposed nuclear aspirations, depose President Hafez Assad in Syria, crush the Palestinian resistance, and remodel the Middle East by "precision strike" democracy.
There will be serious blowback.
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