Let me begin by using a standard apology borrowed from elsewhere that is a sadly necessary preamble for anyone addressing their friends in the United States. In commencing this diary, I acknowledge that some here may find my comments offensive. Honesty is the best policy and I make my criticisms as a contribution to the debate which is necessary in a free society. All Europeans owe a great debt to the United States of America and, as friends of your country, we think we should be frank with you when discussing matters on which we disagree.
These comments have their beginning in the depression that overcame me as I listened to the debate on the appointment of Gonzales earlier this week. I wrote at the time that being required by a stubborn White House to deliberate publicly about rewarding a man to whom the issue of torture was fairly or unfairly, but unavoidably, attached was demeaning for your country. It was one of the darkest blemishes of the many that seem to have besmirched the historic chamber of the Senate Building in the last four years.
In posting from this small and obscure part of Europe, I frequently fall into the trap of seeing issues in terms of immediate events and, in particular, the result of the administration of George Bush. I am not alone in this, as this
critique of George Bush by one European liberal commentator shows:
It is undeniable that relations between the United States of America and the countries of Europe are in crisis. The present occupant of the White House is the most unpopular President outside America since the end of World War II.
In some countries, anti-Bush sentiment is turning into anti-Americanism. That trend can only continue during the next four years.
There are many issues where the policies of the Bush Administration in the USA are at variance with the European consensus, ranging from how to tackle global warming, globalisation issues, human rights and development issues, to more fundamental questions of war and peace.
The single biggest issue presently dividing the United States of America (or at least its present Administration) from the European consensus, is the claim of the United States to be entitled, as the world's only remaining super-power, to act unilaterally (and, if need be, contrary to international law) whenever the Administration deems it in the US "National Security interest" to do so. Since the definition of "National Security interest" has progressively been expanded to cover situations where the security of the USA cannot by any conceivable stretch of the imagination be said to be in issue, what is really meant by the Bush Administration is that it considers itself entitled to remould the whole world to its advantage as and when it wishes.
The conventional European way of looking at the current situation is to see the members of the Bush administration as politicians whose world view has been shaped by a generation in which America has been the sole hyper power and who intend to keep it that way. The neoconservatives who supply its ideological raison d'etre have been disarmingly frank that the explicit objective of US strategy is not only to see off any hostile enemy, but also to prevent the emergence of any peaceful competitor that challenges its economic dominance.
This view goes on to identify that Bush, emboldened by re-election in 2004, is anxious to deploy American pressure to derail development of a closer European Union. He is seen to compete with Europe and with Russia for the allegiance of emerging ex-Iron Curtain countries. Whilst aggressively enforcing control of the Middle East, he moves ever closer to trying to limit the immediate border influence of the increasing challenge of China.
Is all of this simply a function, however, of the current presidency of George Bush that at worst will end in four years time and which could be moderated by a differently balanced US legislature in 2006?
Many Europeans have concluded that this is not so. The election of Bill Clinton, admired overseas as someone having profound multilateralist instincts, looks more and more like an aberration in the broad sweep of modern US politics. The consistency of the neocon agenda and influence from Bush 1, through Reagan and onto to Bush 2 has all the appearance of a trend rather than simply being a phase.
They would point out that many of social issues within the United States leading to the current political situation have been part of a steady progression over many years. Included in this is the increasing influence of a brand of unique religiosity since the 1950's, the mounting underlying fear that is derived from concerns about declining economic importance and the erosion of what is misguidedly perceived as uniquely American values through internal and external threats.
If the convergence of these factors to get Bush elected is seen merely as a brilliant piece of electioneering by Karl Rove, it seriously underestimates the task facing liberal democrats. Shifts in the tectonic plates of a society take decades, not just the months before a presidential race to the White House.
In the UK, many members of the Labour Party stand apart from their foreign policy by inviting the public to see it as a Blair misjudgement. By this means they avoid complicity in events. The British public are invited to do the same and to take no responsibility for the consequences of their apathy. The Labour Party avoids censure and will be re-elected and the country as a whole avoids the need to censure itself.
To place the emphasis on Bush is to mislead your audience. Bush will go in four years time. Does that remove the elements that placed him in power? Would the Republican Party under another leader re-establish the United States back into the world community?
I would suggest that the liberal democrats on DKos stop using the shorthand of Bush and start assigning the policies and attitudes to where they belong - the majority of the American people, albeit a slim majority.
One of the most frequently expressed views on Daily Kos is that the breakdown in relations with "friendly" nations occurred at the specific point of the invasion of Iraq. This is a denial of an uncomfortable truth. The United States and Europe have been diverging rather than converging for many years. Look for the beginning not to Chirac and Bush but to de Gaulle and Roosevelt.
This divergence has consequences not just in terms of international relations and global influence but in widening differences in domestic areas such as welfare security.
Few would question that the standing of the USA in world opinion has progressively worsened over the last four years. It is important, however, to put this in its fullest historic perspective. The Pew Research Institute report does so dramatically:
Global Opinion: The Spread of Anti-Americanism
A review of Pew Global Attitudes Project findings
Released: January 24, 2005
The numbers paint a sobering picture. Just a quarter of the French approve of U.S. policies, and the situation is only slightly better in Japan and Germany. Most people around the world worry that U.S. global influence is expanding, and majorities in many countries say America's strong military presence actually increases the chances for war.
The latest survey on America's tarnished global image? No, those findings are from a poll conducted by Newsweek -- in 1983. The United States has been down the "ugly American" road before, saddled with a bad image abroad and unable to draw much in the way of international support, even from close allies.
But anti-Americanism is deeper and broader now than at any time in modern history. It is most acute in the Muslim world, but it spans the globe -- from Europe to Asia, from South America to Africa. And while much of the animus is aimed directly at President Bush and his policies, especially the war in Iraq, this new global hardening of attitudes amounts to something larger than a thumbs down on the current occupant of the White House
We need to change our rhetoric here on Daily Kos that identifies Bush as the main propagator, although not necessarily the only instrument, of the neocon agenda. We parody him here, we demonise him, we proclaim ABB (Anybody But Bush) as an election slogan. The danger is that we convince others that we are fighting a man and his acolytes who collectively have managed to capture the White House and use their position to tear down or usurp many of the principles of the Founding Fathers. In doing so, we avoid an unpleasant and awesome fact. Whether by collective will or passive acquiescence, it is the majority of American people that is evolving a nation removed from the spirit proclaimed in its constitution.
It is the American people who are celebrating a pursuit of global hegemony that has saddled America with a budget that will result in US military spending matching the entire defence budgets of all the rest of the world added together. It is not just an article of faith of the neoconservatives that in all conflicts America must be capable of going it alone. It is a matter of pride for many citizens that there will be no external influence on American policy, least of all from the despised United Nations. This pride helped win an election.
These citizens celebrate elections in Iraq, oblivious to the underlying purpose of these and the likely government that will emerge. These citizens forget the cost in American lives in obtaining so shallow a regime change for a people whose own deaths are not even counted.
They celebrate whilst forgetting that they are paying for the budget deficit that has been created by the sale of treasury bonds to the rest of the world, from which they are trying to protect America. It is this majority of citizens that ignores the perverse consequence that the fate of the US economy is now in the hands of the central bank of the People's Republic of China, who could pull the plug any time by selling their massive reserves of US dollars.
It was not Bush but your corporations that have fought the Kyoto agreement, a tragically modest document with the text that was concluded on terms thought to accommodate the US negotiating position.
It is a matter of principle with the neoconservatives to resist any legally binding international agreement. This rejects anything that may constrain US options in the exercise of military might, in ignoring of human rights and in ethical conduct in the world of business. It is your fellow citizens, however, who have translated this from being breathtaking arrogance by a small elitist group into the falsehood of it being the proud independence of a nation based on the go-it-alone frontiersman that made America great.
So, it is truly the state of your nation that is at issue, not the incumbency of Bush.
It is time to put aside references to him. It is time to stop spreading the illusion that a United States without Bush will overcome its inherent fault lines.
The failure that made Lieberman and Salazar so despicable in the debate the other night was not that they mistakenly saw it as their duty to approve the nominee of the President according to a time honoured convention. It was their failure to address the country at a time when your nation is in a crisis that the vast majority do not understand.
Our posts here should address not the deficiencies of Bush but the deficiencies of the nation. The question is not what sort of President should you have but what sort of country should you have.
This is the size of the task with which you are faced. The struggle in which you are engaged is heroic in its proportions. The race is to cure the cancer that is destroying the body politic of your society before the cancer destroys your nation completely.
Forget the formal and stilted borrowed apology at the beginning of this diary. It is enough to say that I believe that I love your country, that has been so much a part of my professional and cultural life, every bit as much as you do. And I fear for it every bit as much as you do.
Which leads to a simple poll that seeks to identify the main source of the concerns that exercise us here so much on Daily Kos, whilst recognising that both may be regarded as significant contributors: