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USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 08-25-2008
<b>Georgian Crisis Is a Trap for U.S. Leadership</b>
<i>Fyodor Lukyanov</i>
<b>Barack Obama Biden, Back from Georgia, Speaks Out Against Russian Invasion</b>
USA And The Future Of The World - dhu - 08-25-2008
Bush seems to be meddling with Brzenzkis's (Obama's controller) dream project.
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 08-30-2008
America has lost its way in the world
* August 29, 2008
There can be no hope of a peaceful planet with the US so belligerent.
AT THE end of the Cold War the United States was supreme and unchallenged, Russia was in decay, poor, disorganised, with ill-equipped military forces. At that time, many people believed the 21st century might have been the time for the human race to advance issues of decency, to establish a more permanent, international peace and really to see that relations between states would be governed by law and not by power. Instead, we have a period of tragic and serious mistakes, a period of prejudice and of refusal to learn from history.
America's leadership was critical to the establishment of the United Nations and to the establishment of a rules-based international system that would outlaw war unless necessary for self defence or sanctioned by the Security Council.
After the end of the Cold War, America could have done so much to continue the advance to an even more effective, rules-based system where law governed relations between states. Instead, today's America has pushed these high aspirations and noble principles aside and led us, step by step, to a point of crisis.
What went wrong?
After the Cold War, the neo-conservatives sought to cement American supremacy. Their underlying philosophy was to enshrine American power throughout this century and beyond, to recast the rest of the world in America's image, if necessary by force of arms. The neo-conservatives did not want the restraint of international agreements, of law or of organisation. To them, September 11, 2001, was an opportunity to free America from those restraints.
As a consequence, the United States has made mistake after mistake and made the world a more dangerous place.
The first mistake was to declare war on terrorists, as opposed to recognising that the problem was really one of intelligence, good policing, supported, as necessary, by military action.
The second mistake was to say to the world,
The third, more serious, mistake, was not to put adequate resources into tracking down and eliminating al-Qaeda's leadership and destroying its network.
The fourth mistake was to declare an illegal war on Iraq, a massive diversion that has caused only disaster and made peace in the Middle East even more difficult.
The next mistake was not to divert adequate attention to the problems between Israel and Palestinians, to seek to divide Palestinians. Ignoring Hamas makes peace virtually impossible.
In another mistake beginning at the end of 2001, the Administration plotted, step by step to bypass the Geneva Convention, the torture convention, to free America to act as it wanted. The people participating, lawyers, politicians, bureaucrats are arguably guilty of serious war crimes.
The next mistake was to place obligations on president Pervez Musharraf that no Pakistani leader would be able to deliver. Fundamentalists have been strengthened in the North-West Territories. Pakistan is almost in a state of chaos.
Even more important than these serious errors was failure to deal with Russia from a sense of respect and recognition of Russia's traditional interests, which Russia would seek to protect.
It was the US that wished to push NATO to the boundaries of Russia, ignoring the fact that NATO's real job had been done. America wanted NATO to include Ukraine and Georgia.
President George Bush tore up international treaties, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. His actions have, in fact, begun a new arms race.
Over Georgia, the US and the West, with rare exceptions, have ignored the trigger that began the fighting and the still-continuing problems. President Mikheil Saakashvili, who moved his troops into Ossetia, allegedly killing 2000 civilians within a matter of hours, broke an uneasy peace that had prevailed since the early 1990s.
America's rhetoric and American diplomacy, America's rearmament of Georgia's military forces, encouraged Saakashvili into believing he had American support. My opposition to this conflict is as strong as was my opposition to the war in Iraq.
We need a world in which international institutions are respected, where the Security Council can have real influence and where relations between states will be governed by the law and not by force of arms.
Europe needs to think long and hard about the development of its relations with Russia.
Sadly, the unthinking pursuit of American dominance without any real consideration of longer term consequences of actions has destroyed the reputation America had built up in the several decades after WWII.
If America is to exercise effective world leadership, it must recognise that doing it by force of arms is no longer practical or possible, it must be by wise diplomacy, by using and strengthening international structures, specially the Security Council and the International Criminal Court.
We need to re-engage the best of America, the America that in the immediate postwar years did so much to establish a law-based system to govern relations between states. Resuming that mantle can give America real influence and the rest of us the best hope for a peaceful world.
Malcolm Fraser was prime minister from 1975 to 1983.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/america-h...4zk.html?page=3
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 08-30-2008
<b>What Does America Want in Europe</b>?
By Marek Halter
<b>America's Georgia</b>
<i>The small war between Georgia and Russia should become an opportunity for a new US global strategy. Or else a whole new political geography might crash the world at the end of a new Cold War</i>
by Francesco Sisci
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 08-30-2008
<b>WHITE AGAINST BLACK</b>
<b>The Hidden Issue in the US Presidential Campaign</b>
By Gerhard Spörl
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 08-30-2008
Netzeitung.de, Germany
<b>Barack Canât Become Britney</b>
<b>The âAs-Ifâ Strategists </b>
<i>Had NATO agreed to bring Georgia into NATO next spring as the Bush administration wanted, this would not have reduced Russian pressure on Georgia but would have greatly increased it without leaving the West with any realistic counter options.</i><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->But even the best strategy can fail if the Europeans remain fragmented. Then Moscow still holds the trump cards, it can choose the allies it wants, and play one country off against the other. If it stays that way, the next crisis will also remain caught in the âAs Ifâ strategy.
Unfortunately, the probability for that scenario is high. In its reaction to the Georgia crisis, the division between the ânewâ and the âoldâ Europe that Donald Rumsfeld referred to during the Iraq War was obvious.When will the nations of old Europe â Germany, France, Italy â finally learn that they may ask for economic advantages from Russia but can have no influence on regulatory policy because they, in themselves, lack the political weight to do so? When will the nations of new Europe â Poland and the Baltic States â recognize that they might hinder a European consensus but canât prevent old Europe from making deals with Russia without them?
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USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 08-30-2008
olha, Brazil
<b>U.S. Media Perpetuates Bush Era</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Cornered in a press conference, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, veteran of the fight against the âevil soviet empire,â had to end with âwas I clear?â when asked for the third time if he would send troops to remove the Russians from the country to which the U.S. promised NATO membership in exchange for sending 2,000 soldiers to Iraq.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The war in the Caucasus transformed into dust the idea that the end of the Bush administration would bury the more messianic instincts of an era of unipolar illusions, which he used until the brink of their existence.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 08-30-2008
Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland
Russia Fighting U.S., Not Georgia
Mocking midgets like Georgia or Poland (which the media called Americaâs âlittle alliesâ) provides proof that decision makers in Moscow are in a good mood. They are trying to persuade their subjects that Russia, after years of âhumiliation,â finally âgot back on its feetâ and is ready to confront the most powerful country in the world. The fact that it is going to trample on its neighbors at the same time should not be seen as a horrible thing. They deserve it.
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 08-30-2008
<b>Biden frames the debate </b>
<b>Europeans bet big on Obama</b>
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 08-30-2008
<b>From Russia with love?</b>
By Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's Senior Political Analyst, in New York
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->But as in Ian Fleming's From Russia with Love, smooth talk and sophisticated mannerisms only hid plots and counterplots.<b>
When Bush tried to lecture his Russian host, yet again, about democracy during the 2006 G8 summit, Putin took a direct jab at the US president: "We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly."
At that time, the US were six years into the Afghanistan war and three years into Iraq's; the US was growing insecure because of the loss of its strategic capital and financial prestige around the world.
In the meantime, the robust and confident Russian leadership under Putin benefited from higher oil prices and grew bolder vis-Ã -vis the Bush administration's foreign policies.
While the ridiculing of the macho Texan did not go down too well, Bush's need for Putin's help with a number of strategic challenges around the world stretching from North Korea to Iran helped defuse tensions.</b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
USA And The Future Of The World - dhu - 09-01-2008
<b>Americanism:The Fourth Great Western Religion</b> (Review)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->American Enterprise Institute fellow Gelernter argues that America is a biblical republic and Americanism a biblical religion encompassing an American Creed with three political ideals (liberty, equality, and democracy) and a doctrine, American Zionism, <b>incorporating the biblically derived ideas of a chosen people in a promised land. </b>Americanism is global. There's no need to be American, or to believe in God, to subscribe to it. Still, to understand Americanism, you need to understand America. Gelernter discusses the emergence of Americanism through several crucial events in American history: the Puritan exodus from England, the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, the cold war, and Islamic terrorism. He insists that his book is neither history nor group portrait but instead "an essay in folk philosophy." Not everyone will agree with Gelernter's conclusions (e.g., "If there is to be justice in the world, America must create it"), but <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
USA And The Future Of The World - dhu - 09-01-2008
<b>Astonishing US hypocrisy</b>
Premen Addy (Pioneer)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->When guns blaze, and swords are drawn and ploughshares left to rust in the meadows, media barons, always on cue, take up their cudgels. It is the 21st century's primary trans-Atlantic predator proclaiming its corporatist lineage to Mussolini and Goebbels. The obscenity of Iraq's destruction and colossal human loss is transformed into a luminous triumph of the democratic will; US-armed Islamist jihadis once counted a blessing in the struggle to reduce and traduce Russia and, to a lesser degree, India; after 9/11 they became a curse.
Sceptics are advised to read a recent Financial Times report on the current Kashmir unrest from sunny California. Amy Louise Kazmin, whose naked eye is unable to detect any transgression in the Valley's Muslim leadership. The evil, she claims with a turn of Pecksniffian rectitude, lies with the BJP-driven Hindu 'rioters' of Jammu -- the travails of the displaced Hindu Pandit community are cast into limbo. Small wonder that Tom Bairstow, a New Statesman hand in the magazine's long gone better days, dismissed his country's media as "the Fourth-rate Estate."
The US Democratic Party's obfuscated coronation of Mr Barack Obama as its candidate in November's presidential election was played out to tunes of primordial glory; in contrast the equally rousing call of the Russian Parliament that the breakaway Georgian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia be recognised as sovereign states is derided as xenophobia.
Muslim Kosovo was detached from Orthodox Christian Serbia on the ground of self-determination and declared independent by American and EU decree, with cavalier disregard for Serbian sensitivities and over the vigorous objections of fellow Orthodox friend, Russia. But the elixir of Kosovo becomes hemlock when applied to areas where Western realpolitik affirms territorial integrity as a paramount principle. At such moments one is reminded of the stately Tory MP Edward du Cann striding down the corridors of the House of Commons, when a fellow MP stopped him to ask the time: "What time would you like it to be, old boy," he drawled, casting a languid look at his gold pocket watch.
The anti-Russian vitriol over Georgia from America's good and great, products of motley national security think-tanks singing from a common hymn-sheet, says much for the jaundiced eyes of the beholder, there being nothing quite like the malignity of disappointed humanity.
A spluttering Robert Hunter, a former US envoy to Nato, likened Russia to a "Saudi Arabia with trees". Remember the dire warning of the witches to Macbeth if "Great Birnam Wood to High Dunsinane hill/ Shall come...". These apparently are matters of small moment in Washington, DC. Time magazine published a philippic against Moscow from Mr Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser, notable for its staple Polish American incoherence. Its lubricious diatribes were unencumbered by the slightest recognition of America's numerous inequities in its own backyard and beyond in ages past and in the evolving present.
Truth is that the end of the Cold War was perceived in Washington, DC as a heaven sent opportunity to construct a genuine global empire complete with 100 military bases spread over every continent. American journalist and commentator Thomas Fleming wrote the following passage way back in March 1999: "Now that the Soviet Empire belongs to history, and for the foreseeable future Germany is in no position to go back to rattling sabres, the United States is top dog -- unchallenged in its might, but irresponsible in its leadership and uncontrolled appetite for hegemony. Some American conservatives are already calling for an American 'imperium', which they have tried, unsuccessfully, to distinguish from an empire (Americans don't study Latin.) Whatever we call it, Anerican adventurism is the greatest force for evil in the world today."
US security, say its most vociferous advocates, is blessed with moral weight, those beyond the pale are condemned, like sinners, to the eternal damnation of insecurity and its fears and tensions. Of America's attempts at pacification it might be said as it was of Rome's: "They make a desert, they call it peace."
The Times columnist, Michael Binyon, cut the cackle. "The cartoon images have shown Russia as an angry bear, stretching out a claw to maul Georgia. Russia is certainly angry, and like a beast provoked, has bared its teeth. But it is the wrong stereotype. What the world has seen last week is a brilliant and brutal display of Russia's national game, chess... For years there was rising resentment within Russia (that a weakened) Russia's views no longer mattered."
They do now. The country's economy is booming, its coffers are bulging. Its wealth is in Russian hands, not in the hands of grasping foreign predators. Its energy resources are firmly Russian. Gas and oil flow through Russian pipelines to Western customers. You pay for what you get. "Checkmate Gazprom" was the title of Derek Brower's informative and expert analysis in Prospect magazine. The battle has been truly joined. For all the inebriating, overblown rhetoric, Nato, notwithstanding its hi-tech war machine, is an organisation with feet of clay. It fights in Iraq and Afghanistan with conspicuous lack of success. Anglo-American brave hearts calling for a holy crusade against Russia beware.
It is a message that comes across loud and clear from the truest American conservative thinker, the famous Patrick Buchanan, no less. Mr Buchanan is scornful of his country's neocon lobby. He dismisses its members as a cabal of influential but pretentious buccaneers who violate the verities of philosophical conservatism, according to which all change should be incremental, even as it keeps faith with its traditional cultural and historical foundations.
Nations and peoples have their special characteristics moulded by time; their histories and affinities are as deserving of American respect as America is deserving of theirs. It is no business of American rulers to alter the world in America's image. The American economy is is in a parlous state. Its ills are being exported to the economies of its European allies; it is a nation in serious over-stretch but blinded by hubris.
The Pat Buchanan column began thus: "Mikhail Saakashvali's decision to to use the opening of the Olympic to cover Georgia's invasion of... South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamel Abdul Nasser's decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships." In the light of US bombing of Serbia and Israel's assault on Lebanon, "Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?" he asks. Say it again Pat.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 09-04-2008
Tabnak, Iran
<b>Is America Falling Like the Roman Empire? </b>
Die Tageszeitung, Germany
A <b>Great Quest in a Vast Country</b>
Lian He Zao Bao, Singapore
<b>Russiaâs Monroe Doctrine and the end of Pax Americana</b>
Le Droit, Canada
<b>New Cold War?</b>
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 09-04-2008
Kitabat, Iraq
<b>American ImperialismâBetween the Balfour Declaration and the Biden Declaration</b>
Iltalehti, Finland
<b>Obama Silent on Russia</b>
USA And The Future Of The World - acharya - 09-04-2008
OPINION
<b>Russia and the West Are a World Apart</b>
By Gyorgy Schopflin
USA And The Future Of The World - Guest - 09-24-2008
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Brand new push in Congress to prevent Shariah invasion
http://worldmonitor.wordpress.com/
Drew Zahn -Sept. 23
<b>Congressman Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., introduced a bill to the House of Representatives that seeks to prevent Islam's radical Shariah law from gaining a foothold in the U.S. legal system, as it has in other countries.</b>
Tancredo introduced HR 6975, the Jihad Prevention Act, last week. If made into law, the bill would allow American authorities to prevent advocates of Shariah law from entering the country, revoke the visa of any foreigners that did champion Shariah law and revoke naturalization for citizens that seek to implement Shariah law in the U.S.
The radical form of Islam's Shariah religious law includes several statutes often objectionable to Western minds, including stoning for adulterous women, amputation for thieves and the death sentence for converting from Islam.
"<b>When you have an immigration policy that allows for the importation of millions of radical Muslims," Tancredo said in a press release, "you are also importing their radical ideology â an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to the foundations of Western democracy â such as gender equality, pluralism and individual liberty."</b>
"The best way to safeguard America against the importation of the destructive effects of this poisonous ideology is to prevent its purveyors from coming here in the first place," Tancredo said.
As WND reported earlier, large Muslim populations in Canada seeking to live out their faith have convinced the Canadian government to permit the enforcement of Shariah law.
The journal of the American Bar Association reported last week that Islamic court rulings are now enforceable in the United Kingdom as well.
Tancredo said he "moved quickly" to prevent similar legal entanglements in the U.S.
<b>"We need to send a clear message that the only law we recognize here in America is the U.S. Constitution and the laws passed by our democratically elected representatives," concluded Tancredo. "If you aren't comfortable with that concept, you aren't welcome in the United States."</b>
WND contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations for comment on the bill, but received none.
HR 6975 has been referred to the House Committee on Judiciary for review.
Courtesy : WorldNetDaily
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USA And The Future Of The World - Capt M Kumar - 10-05-2008
<!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo--> The Army on Monday will unveil an unprecedented doctrine that declares nation-building missions will probably become more important than conventional warfare and defines "fragile states" that breed crime, terrorism and religious and ethnic strife as the greatest threat to U.S. national security.The doctrine, which has generated intense debate in the U.S. military establishment and government, holds that in coming years, American troops are not likely to engage in major ground combat against hostile states as they did in Iraq and Afghanistan, but instead will frequently be called upon to operate in lawless areas to safeguard populations and rebuild countries.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27033424/
USA And The Future Of The World - dhu - 11-10-2008
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> The Prussian Monarchy Stuff
by William S. Lind
Thus, when Americans and Europeans wonder today how and why the West lost its historic culture, morals and religion, the ultimate answer is the Allied victory in 1918. Again, the fact that World War I occurred is the greatest disaster. But once that had happened, the last chance the West had of retaining its traditional culture was a victory by the Central Powers. The question should not be why I, as a cultural conservative, remain loyal to the two Kaisers, Wilhelm II and Franz Josef, but how a real conservative could do anything else.
Nor is this all quite history. Just as the defeat of the Central Powers in 1918 marked the tipping point downward of Western civilization and the real beginning of the murderous Twentieth Century, so <b>events in the Middle East today may mark the beginnings of the 21st Century and, not so much the death of the West, which has already occurred, but its burial. </b>The shadows of 1914, and of 1918, are long indeed, and they end in Old Night.
[right][snapback]88798[/snapback][/right]
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USA And The Future Of The World - dhu - 11-16-2008
The Decline and Fall of a Civilization
by Butler Shaffer
USA And The Future Of The World - shamu - 11-16-2008
Interesting line of thought....
<!--QuoteBegin-dhu+Nov 10 2008, 02:18 AM-->QUOTE(dhu @ Nov 10 2008, 02:18 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--> The Prussian Monarchy Stuff
by William S. Lind
...
Of course, like all real conservatives, I am a monarchist. <b>The universe is not a republic.</b>....<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->