It's Just Not One Problem President
Believe it or not, it's not just the baby Bush
We are quick to jump to the conclusion that the world seems to have turned upside down solely because Bush is president. And while he may very well be the worst president yet, let's not kid ourselves into thinking everything was going well before him. A common question circulating is, would we be in this mess if Gore had won in 2000? Would 9/11 have happened? Would there have been this embarrassing push for war?
While certain aspects of 9/11 seem to single out Bush rather quickly - the Bush family's long personal history with the bin Laden family and Bush's bizarre connections to the insurance and security on the WTC buildings, to name but two—we shouldn't be so naive as to fantasize that the US would no longer be a target for terrorism under a Democratic administration. The 1993 WTC bombing was on Clinton's watch. The fact of the matter is, while Clinton may have been skilled at diplomacy, his foreign policy was nothing to cheer about. He bombed Iraq in 1993 after some Kuwaitis alleged that they had uncovered a plot to assassinate Bush, Sr. He bombed Iraq harder in 1998, not to mention the Sudan, both with civilian casualties, neither with achieved objectives. He perpetuated the starvation campaigns (or "sanctions") against Iraq and Cuba. He increased funding for the Colombian military (which not only tortures people but apparently traffics about as much drugs as the opposition), Indonesia (where people were getting their arms chopped off) and, of course, Israel (which operates to this day in a perpetual state of international crime).
People say the US hasn't had a discernible foreign policy since Bush became president. But US foreign policy has been plagued with inconsistincies for decades. Or rather, the one thing that has been conistent is a disrespect for the international community. Everyone says, yeah we screwed up Vietnam, Korea, Grenada, etc., but what about WWII? Nobody seems to remember that WWII was going on for years before the US got involved. Maybe while Canada was fighting Hitler and Mussolini, we were still figuring out how to vindicate the American corporations and individuals, such as Prescott Bush, that helped finance the nazis.
I know some readers are desperately waiting to jump in and say that I don't support the men and women that gave their lives, and are giving their lives, in the service of our country. But that's just silly because soldiers don't write policy. They do their jobs which is to follow orders. And frankly, if you're not critical of those who make the policies that abuse this relationship, then you really don't support the troops.
Obviously, this war changes US policy (for the worse) and certainly we can amuse ourselves by imagining at the very least that Gore wouldn't have had the personal interest in Iraq that Bush and Cheneyburton do. But we know Gore's connection to Occidental Petroleum, a company promoting the tear-gas extermination of the Colombian native population. So maybe we'd be at war there instead.
We'd be fooling ourselves if we didn't recognize that the interests of corporations have long outweighed the interests of the American people and this is a bipartisan disgrace. Bin Laden once said that the only way the Americans can protect themselves now is by choosing different leaders. I don't relish the thought of taking advice from him. But if our leaders are being recruited from corporations whose only objectives are to increase the profit margin, even if it requires child slave labor overseas or the imposition of a brutal dictator, then we must realize that our struggle cannot end with the removal of Bush, but only with the legitimate and moral improvement of the way this country operates in the international arena.
Dick Cheney rarely seems to make public appearances anymore, and not just because he looks like an evil henchman from a Bond flick, but because he doesn't want to answer questions about how involved he still is with Halliburton. Not that anyone would notice, but Halliburton's affiliate didn't win the contract to fight the Iraqi oil fires—it was given it. Now apologists may scramble to explain that Halliburton has all the resources and experience, but one might think it a conflict of interest when all this experience came from another Bush war when Cheney had Rumsfeld's job.
Even our nation's not-so-secret secret gay lover, the United Kingdom, seems disappointed to find that the American (and incidentally, anti-union) Stevedoring company will be managing the recently conquered port of Umm Qasr. Didn't these corporate philanthropists make some mention of turning the future of Iraq over to the, oh what are they called... Iraqis? Sure, just like our installation of Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan none of the Afghanis seemed to have heard of, a former executive at UNOCAL (or The Burmese Slave Labor Co.), a man sure to have his priorities straight.
The point of all this rambling is that we can no longer point the finger directly at Bush and say "his fault". Well, maybe for the instigation of this specific war, but not for the environment that made it possible. We need to be reaching out with all fingers on all hands and grab the entire government by its ears and scream for change. The United States needs to start writing its history to reflect its true ideals. No sense in repeating them. You should know what they are.
The United States has the power to serve as a beacon of hope and while it already does for many, it does the opposite for more. Foreign policy has to be based on protecting sovereignty and on compromise for the good of all people, not just a wealthy few. Your mother may get away with saying "do as I say, not as I do" but she wasn't elected democratically.
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