Re: [A-List] Re: Return to an old standard

["annewilliamson" <annewilliamson@xxxxxxx>]

On Feb 10, 2003 Gary Santos wrote:

 > You know I've been thinking about the U.S. and Rome -- a parallel that is
> not unique, others have thought so, too. That the US is trying to dominate
> the world using all resources that it has available to it. And, surprise,
I
> don't think it's that bad an idea to have a world dominated and united
under
> the Amercian style of democracy.

The American style of "democracy," which is NOT what the Republic of the
United States is based upon, sustains itself through manipulation by a self-
interested and destructive elite; it's prosperity is based on a system of
credit
and paper money that - as the holder of the reserve currency - allows the US
to loot the world.  IOWs, the American "system" such as it is can not be
expanded across the planet as there would be no subjects remaining for easy
racketeering through the currency to sustain the phony "democratic"
apparatus.
Voting rights make this palatable?  Not when the only choices are
pre-approved
Tweedledums and Tweedledees.  The very idea of a world government is
repellent, destroying as it would all the diversity and cultural richness
that
makes life such an intriguing and exiting experience.  A secular Tower of
Babel
will collapse just as the Biblical one did.  And below is an outline of what
we
all should be very worried about when a bunch of hysterical,
hyperventillating
wannabe emperors demand unfettered freedom -- for themselves, for their
"visions," and for their "missions."  The discussion should be about
liberty,
not "democracy." -A.


George Bush's Faith-Based Foreign Policy

By Robert Higgs*
In public statements, President George W. Bush has often avowed his personal
religious faith, and from the very beginning of his administration, he has
sought to draw churches and other religious organizations into the orbit of
the government's provision of goods and services-thus, the so-called
faith-based initiatives. Bush insists that such religious providers have an
excellent record in helping drug addicts and others who have gone astray to
get their lives back on track. Although the president has yet to announce
formally that his foreign policy also relies heavily on faith, this reality
has become increasingly clear as his term in office has unfolded.

When the administration released its "National Security Strategy of the
United States of America" to Congress last summer, the grandiosity of the
intentions expressed in the document stunned many observers-as commentator
Joseph Stromberg noted, "it must be read to be believed." The strategy
amounts to an enormously presumptuous agenda for domination of the entire
world, not only overweening in the vast scope of the specific ambitions
enumerated but also brazen in the implicit assumption that the president of
the United States and his lieutenants are morally entitled to run the
planet. It takes a lot of faith in one's own rectitude to declare, among
other things, that "our best defense is a good offense" (I am not making
this up, it's in the document). Small wonder that George Bush closes his
introduction to the document by resorting to religious metaphor, referring
to his foreign policy as "this great mission."

Well might we recall, however, that the crusaders of old went forth on their
faith-inspired missions heavily armed and itching for a fight, and in those
respects the Bush administration bears a startling resemblance to them. "As
a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against . . .
emerging threats before they are fully formed," the president declares. In
disturbingly Orwellian rhetoric, he affirms that "the only path to peace and
security is the path of action"-the path, that is, of launching unprovoked
military attacks on other countries. This ongoing preemption, supported by
the administration's faith that it can identify the threats correctly even
before they blossom, will be, the president warns, "a global enterprise of
uncertain duration." We may presume that once Eurasia has been preemptively
polished off, the United States will set its military sights on Eastasia.

The adminstration's faith in preemptive warfare currently expresses itself
in the plan for military conquest of Iraq, a country that has not threatened
the United States and does not possess the means to do so effectively in any
event (in part because the United States has been waging low-level warfare
and enforcing an economic embargo against it for some twelve years). The
Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Perle coterie evidently has faith that the United
States can conquer Iraq quickly and then turn it into a showcase of stable,
flourishing democracy. The sheer preposterousness of this expectation
suggests that it is fueled more by quasi-religious zealotry than by logic
and evidence. Whatever else Iraq may be, it certainly is not a democratic
success story waiting to be told by American crusaders. Indeed, given the
violent ethnic, religious, and political conflicts that ravage this
unfortunate country, it may not be viable under any form of government
except dictatorship-nothing in its history suggests otherwise.

Nonetheless, President Bush, after having insisted not so long ago that he
opposed getting our country bogged down in utopian "nation building," now
has unleashed the neoconservative fanatics to transform the Middle East into
a fantastical form they find pleasing, molding Iraq itself into something
remarkably like the placid social democracies of North America and Western
Europe. If you suspect that the Iraqis lack the necessary parts to compose
this visionary contraption, well, you just need to have faith. As St. Paul
wrote to the Hebrews (11:1), "faith is the substance of things hoped for,
the evidence of things not seen"-a characterization that fits perfectly the
administration's vertiginous conception of the post-conquest reconstruction
of Iraq.

Finally, the Bush administration has faith that it can continue to drag the
American people down the path of perpetual war for perpetual peace and
endless nation-building. Maybe it can: for the most part, the people
certainly have rolled over and played patsy so far, especially if we judge
by the actions of their pusillanimous representatives in Congress, who
hastened to pass a resolution unconstitutionally delegating to the president
their power to declare war against Iraq.

In the past, however, the American public has risen up from time to time to
insist with regard to some disastrous foreign adventure that enough is
enough. They eventually did so during the Korean War, and they did so again
during the Vietnam War. Unfortunately, in both instances the public came to
its senses only after enormous loss of life and other human and material
devastation had been sustained. More recently, with respect to the U.S.
military mission to Somalia, the public quickly decided against spilling
additional blood in a seemingly hopeless nation-building effort.

I would like to believe that sooner or later the American people will
resist, and resist strongly, the Bush administration's crusade for global
domination in general and its present plan to conquer and reconstruct Iraq
in particular. As matters now stand, though, I just don't have much faith in
the majority of my fellow citizens.





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*Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy at The Independent
Institute and editor of its scholarly quarterly journal, The Independent
Review. He is also the author of Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in
the Growth of American Government and the editor of Arms, Politics and the
Economy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.


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