Bush's comments that American's shouldn't embrace "protectionism" was
disturbing.
Rich elites love open markets -- it means their monopoly board gets extended
and keeps growing. A small percentage of the U.S. will benefit from having
to compete on the same level as, say, the Chinese. The rest of the U.S. will
see their earning power slowly erode, because of NOT embracing
protectionism.
It would be like someone advocating for people to engage in risky sex and
not wear condoms cause it feels better.
It's just stupid.
"See You Now!" <www@NoPugs.net> wrote in message
news:UdfFf.9530$2O6.5848@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
Bush Just Has to Face It: He is Wrong and Chirac is Right
The crises over Hamas and Iran underline the collapse of the neocon
mission and the end of a one-superpower world
by Jonathan Steele
George Bush's presidency still has three years to run, but this
week's
state of the union address had an unmistakably ebb-tide air. Its tone -
"chastened, deferential, modest" in the words of the Los Angeles Times -
suggested that the president felt the waves of power were flowing against
him.
This is not the same as being a lame duck. The moment when
second-term
presidents start to face severe problems in getting legislation through
Congress or convincing foreign allies to support controversial measures
normally comes later in the cycle. The last midterm elections (in this
case
November 2006) are the usual peak before the White House incumbent's
domestic authority declines. On foreign policy the slippage comes even
later. It may be delayed as far as the final weeks of office, as Bill
Clinton found when he tried to broker peace between Israel and the
Palestinians in January 2001.
Nor does the change in Bush's demeanour this week result mainly from
fading support among Americans for what will be remembered as the central
decision of his presidency, the mistaken war on Iraq. His unprecedentedly
low poll ratings certainly affected his mood on Tuesday night, and one
sharp-eyed New York Times reporter noted that "he smiled seldom and only
winked once". But the reason for Bush's gloom goes much deeper.
Like missionaries who find that the heathens are refusing to be
converted, he and his neocon colleagues are beginning to realise that
their
mission of freedom is not as convincing as they expected. It is also
having
unpredicted effects, forcing them to confront awkward choices: carry on
elaborating grand principles, or adjust the message and feel guilty of
sinful backsliding.
Bush's speech was remarkable for the number of times he called on
his
fellow Americans not to retreat, not to give up, not to succumb to
pessimism, not to be defeatist. If his policies were not floundering,
these
pleas would not have been necessary. They were markedly different from the
confident tone of last year's address, when he had just been inaugurated
for
a second term and the administration hoped that Iraq's first elections
would
bring the collapse of the insurgency. Now, after a constitutional
referendum
and another election, the attacks on US and British forces show no sign of
abating significantly.
Bush insisted on Tuesday that democracy was still on the march
around
the world, particularly in the Middle East. He cited the polls in Egypt,
Palestine and Saudi Arabia, though when he claimed that Iran "is held
hostage by a small clerical elite" he seemed to forget that its president
was also elected: he won in a well-contested race with a high voter
turnout
and no obvious frontrunner.
Yet, as one listens to Bush and his neocon team, their sense of
frustration is palpable. They realise they have been ambushed by their own
policies. Their zeal for ideological purity pushed them into positions
from
which it is hard to escape without looking as though they are betraying
themselves.
Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, has made two difficult
trips
to Europe in less than a month. The first was overshadowed by the scandal
over secret US torture centres in Europe; the second was meant to be a
triumphant assertion of progress in Afghanistan, but turned into a series
of
crisis meetings on Hamas and Iran.
Rice pleads with Europeans to understand that a real war is going on
and there are bad people out there. She urges us not to be complacent
about
terrorism and argues the need to make tough changes in our civil-liberty
laws. She sees it as a success that the Bush administration has abolished
the distinction between freedom fighters and terrorists. This means, she
argues, that the tolerance shown to the Palestine Liberation Organisation
in
the 1980s, which allowed them generous time to drop their commitment to
violence, cannot be repeated with Hamas now.
She fears that Hamas's victory will erode Europeans' commitment to
the
war on terror as they struggle to square the circle of continuing to help
the Palestinians while calling on their new government to tear up its
manifesto. The Hamas crisis is not just a foreign-policy dilemma. It is a
metaphor for the brittle nature of the Bush administration's self-awarded
global mission as it faces the contradictions of the real world.
The crisis over Iran's nuclear ambitions is equally significant. The
post-cold-war era, when there was only a single superpower, is over now.
The
United States is being forced to enlist Russia and, to a lesser extent,
China as partners in finding a compromise. With this, the economic rise of
India and the resurgence of anti-yanqui nationalism in several states in
Latin America, we have clearly entered a multipolar world.
No one in Downing Street or Washington will admit it publicly, but
Jacques Chirac has turned out to be right. His global Gaullism, the notion
that the world has several power centres, and it is no longer just "the
west
versus the rest", offers a more accurate picture than the image of the
lone
cowboy acting in the name of us all. The analysis is not Chirac's alone,
of
course. The French president is in most ways a discredited figure, little
loved even at home. But he is the most prominent European to dare to
embrace
multipolarity as the new reality of international politics.
Leaders of the non-aligned nations have been saying the same thing
for
a long time, as have Washington's latest bugbears, such as Hugo Chávez in
Venezuela. In his soft-spoken way, Kofi Annan has also been calling for a
new recognition of the dispersal of international power. In a
little-reported speech in London this week, he took issue with even the
concept of a five-nation power centre made up of the permanent members of
the UN security council. "Do not underestimate the slow erosion of the
UN's
authority and legitimacy that stems from the perception that it has a very
narrow power base, with just five countries calling the shots," he
pleaded.
UN reform is a slow process, and it is doubtful whether the new
claimants for permanent security-council seats, such as Brazil, India and
Japan, will get their way soon. But the trend is in their direction,
regardless of whether it is formalised by the UN now or in several years.
So, Bush's frantic pleas to his American audience not to retreat are
signs not just that his ideological simplicities carry less conviction at
home than they once did. He has also begun to see that US power abroad is
on
the wane.
j.steele@guardian.co.uk
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
Bush wrong again? When has Bush ever been right?
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