On 23 Jan 2006 at 11:54, John Lee wrote:

> Why is it that you pick on the USA?  There are many many other
> countries who's deficiencies far outweigh ours, yet it's always
> us that you blame in your postings. 

The United States of America, by virtue of its pre-eminent 
economic, military and political power, alone possesses the 
capacity, insomuch as such is possible, to shape the political 
processes of the world for a very long time to come.  Its society's 
manifest defects and consummate strengths (and it has many, many of 
the latter although this may not appear evident from my posts) are 
therefore of intense interest.  

Whether or not Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac invade somebody is 
rather meaningless in itself, as the whole world assumes that 
neither would act in the face of steadfast U.S. opposition.  Even 
Russia and China, for now, forbear to overtly defy the will of the 
United States on any but the most pressing issue.  Therefore, it 
seems pointless to try and influence the behaviour of of the 
dependents when it is the attitude of the patron that is decisive.

I point out that most of my posts on this subject are consequential 
to baseless and jingoistic declarations by persons who replace 
evidence and reason with self-serving denial and obfuscation when 
confronted with the plain inequity of acts committed in their name. 
 There are many, many Americans who share my views about their own 
country and lament that control of its government has, temporarily, 
passed under the hand of radicalized ideologues who propose to 
impose a selective and most self-serving version of capitalism on 
the rest of the world, or apparently destroy their country's future 
trying.

Despite what you may think, I have rather elevated hopes that the 
United States people will, as they have in the past with such 
movements as 100% Americanism and McCarthyism, come to be revolted 
at the excess perpetrated in their name by chauvinists of the  
present regime and will, in time, enact suitable safeguards against 
similar occurrences in the future.  It is noteworthy, I think, that 
each subsequent occurrence of this sort of thing in the United 
States seems to have been accompanied by higher and higher levels 
of self-criticism in shorter and shorter time-frames and have had 
lesser and lesser absolute effect even as the US population has 
grown from 30 millions to 300 millions.

There is in that observation, I believe, some small hope that the 
many do learn from the mistakes of the few and resolve to do better 
in the future.

There are other considerations.  As a former naval officer and long 
time student of things military (although I believe that I have not 
descended into fetishism), it distresses me to see a finely tuned 
weapon such as the U.S. military abused into ineffectiveness 
through misuse by those who do not appreciate the dual-edged nature 
of violence.  The U.S. Army is effectively melting away under the 
pointless struggle in Iraq and this issue, more than any other, 
will become a burning one as the second and third rank states of 
the world increasingly gird themselves with nuclear weapons. 

Due to Iraq the United States already finds itself wanting in 
military capacity and lacking in political capital abroad. It has 
thus rendered itself incapable of forestalling these developments 
alone and unable to forge a consensus among its former allies to 
take action. Who, it must be admitted, often take a rather short-
sighted pleasure in the present discomfiture of the United States, 
but whose sense of mistrust nonetheless has been engendered by the 
self-serving deceit practised by the present US administration.

The previous regime in Iraq was never a threat to the existence of 
the United States and none that can be anticipated ever will.  
There are, however, more potent threats that are very real and 
whose presence will become pressing the the near future.  The 
administration of the USA, by this fruitless expenditure of 
treasure and lives in Iraq, is weakening, perhaps fatally, their 
country's ability to face these threats successfully or obtain an 
acceptable compromise in the economic struggle that is already 
joined.  They are in fact, emboldening their instigators.

The problem for the rest of us is that if the USA falters in some 
future crisis then all those who value the western European 
tradition of civilization will suffer in consequence.   Presently 
there are none of that tradition that can hope to take the place of 
the United States.  Perhaps in 50 years the EU might emerge as a 
contender, but there is much that must happen before that faint 
eventuality could be realized.  In the meantime, it is to the 
United States that we must look to uphold our values and preserve 
our futures.

Iraq is the wrong war, against the wrong people, at the wrong 
place, in the wrong time, for the wrong reasons, employing the 
wrong methods.  The pointless brutality that is daily more manifest 
in US actions abroad and with respect to terror suspects is the 
surest measure of the lack of progress and the increasing 
hopelessness of attaining the objective (or even understanding what 
the object is, exactly) sensed by the participants.

Extraordinary rendition, secret trials, denial of habeas corpus, 
foreign prisons, torture, state sanctioned murder, mealy-mouthed 
and empty legal phrases like enemy-combatant applied to US citizens 
in justification of misuse by their own government... What would 
the founding fathers of your country say to that?  Do you think 
that my faint admonitions would even compare to what Thomas 
Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, and their peers would 
have to say about the present official conduct of a government that 
they brought into existence?

I would be well to consider that there exist methods of winning 
that destroy the prize.

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