Why Europe Ignores Bush

[RedEarth]

Machiavelli's advice to political leaders was that it's more important to be feared than to be loved. That's no help for President Bush on his European tour; in spite of the warm words he's exchanging with European leaders, the reality is that the Bush administration is neither loved nor feared in growing sectors of the international community — increasingly, it is simply being ignored.

New evidence of this trend, which has developed in the wake of the war in Iraq, emerges every week: Last Friday, Russia's President Vladimir Putin pooh-poohed the U.S. claim that Iran seeks nuclear weapons, and Moscow agreed to move ahead with delivering the nuclear fuel for Tehran's reactors despite Washington's opposition. And in case you missed the message, Russia has also agreed to supply advanced surface-to-air missiles to Syria, the latest focus of U.S. ire in the Middle East — again in defiance of Washington's stated wishes.

It's hard to avoid the irony in Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's suggestion, in the wake of the fall of Baghdad, that the U.S. should “forgive Russia, ignore Germany and punish France” for opposing the war. On this trip, and Rice's preparatory one, it's more than clear that in fact they're trying hard to forgive France and Germany. And it's equally clear that Russia has no interest in U.S. “forgiveness” — President Putin is ignoring the Bush administration.

Nor is Putin alone in shrugging off U.S. calls to abandon trade deals that threaten Washington's strategic interests. The European Union is going ahead with its plans to lift the arms embargo imposed on China after Tiananmen Square, despite urgings by the Bush administration to avoid selling weapons to Beijing.

In their efforts to put a bright face on the administration's diminishing strategic influence, the Bush administration is accentuating the positive — the Europeans have agreed, they point out, to help train Iraqi security forces. Sure, they've agreed to train 1,000 Iraqis a year at a location outside of Iraq. To put that in perspective, the current U.S. goal is to train a further 200,000 Iraqis by October 1 — in other words, the NATO contribution will amount to 0.5 percent of the total. That's a little like the geopolitical equivalent of a Hallmark good-luck greeting card.

http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/0,9565,1029937,00.html

[rkc3]

1. That's a lot of words for a short subject.

Why Europe Ignores bush.

Because he's a fucking idiot.

5 words, short and sweet.

[DuaneBidoux]

15. Exactly.

A Fucking Idiot. This is a brilliant, well thought out, and quite perceptive analysis.

[LibertyorDeath]

2. He's always going to be the

UNpresident! & rice is a joke. A court jester of the worst kind.

Putin eats people like this for lunch. The mans a Shark.

[TheFarseer]

3. It makes you wonder if alliances are shifting

Maybe something like UK, US, Australia vs. Russia, China, Germany, France, India

I'm not sure where India and China fit in but it's for sure not on our side. I know Russia is in league with China, not so much Germany and France.

[phantom power]

4. we're fast losing our "lone superpower" status

our currency is weakening. Our army is over-extended, and trapped in Iraq. Our economy is built on a sand-pit of huge deficits. Our "education" system is busily trying to turn the clock back to the days before Darwin, and our presidency is "faith-based".

Scratch a millimeter below the surface, and it's easy to see that we're weakening as a country, not getting stronger.

[indepat]

6. A strong argument could be made that this country has been weakened

by everything this Administration has done from day-one.

[DuaneBidoux]

16. Absolutely

It is increasingly looking like a classic case of imperial overreach. All the signs are there including some not easily understood by the general public including the socialization of business and financial risk and the individualization of health and job risk. Debt levels public and private are immense and asset bubbles are forming all over the place as the few who have huge assets search for productive ways to invest in a country having increasing trouble affording the consumption it needs. For a fascinating read for where we probably are at, where we are likely to go, as well as a good history of how empires collapse, read Kevin Phillips "Wealth and Democracy." A difficult, but incredibly enlightening read.

By the time this is all over, Democrats may well feel lucky they lost the last election.

[gnofg]

5. Bush

will go down as a terrible president. He will be the one who bankrupted our country and the one who destroyed our status worldwide. Ideologues are very poor for government. They cannot see the big picture and their perspective is off kilter. Bush is too ignorant and too weak to stop them. My wife has a great saying. Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. With Bush he is a manipulator and therefore he is easily manipulated.

[rndmprsn]

7. strategic shift in power

has been happening for some time...bushco, while obsessed with the war on terra and fake crises abroad and at home is waking up to the fact that the rest of the "reality" based world has moved on.

what a pathetic steward of our foriegn policy, well come to think of it...just about everything. it'll take a couple if not a few admins of responsible democratic presidents to undue whatever damage can be undone.

[bemildred]

9. Yes. For some time now, but it's steadily becoming more overt. nt

[TheFarseer]

11. Terrorism is a threat but

it's not a threat to our superpower status. China is. And losing all our allies is a threat. For example, we were the strongest country in WWII but we could not have fought Germany and Japan by ourselves. We would have lost. What I'm saying is, we need to focus on the big picture. John Kerry got pasted for saying terrorism is an annoyance or should be reduced to an annoyance or whatever, but he was absolutely right IMO.

[colonel odis]

8. this is all the rest of the world had to do to bring down the u.s.

don't need guns. no one need be invaded. treaties don't have to be signed.

all they have to do is ignore us, ignore our products, and ignore our bluster. without the rest of the world buying our goods, the u.s. is nothing.

welcome to the beginning of the end for this country.

[tabasco]

10. Great article. Bush & the neocons are hurting us so badly.

I look forward to the day that the US is a respected member of the world community - not a bullying, lazy, and wasteful society. I hope I live to see the day.

[kaitykaity]

12. Yeah, Bush is a uniter all right -- uniting the world against us.

The more defiance the better. The MSM won't
defy Bush, the Thugs won't defy Bush. Maybe
the rest of the world is ready to put the little
tin dictator in his place.

[stopbush]

13. As the world moves forward, * pulls us back to the

dark ages. Like imperialistic England of the 1700-1800s, we think that our military might and our pseudo-morality will conquer all. But the rest of the world is moving forward, forming new alliances and out-maneuvering the USA at every turn.

Our currency is crashing while foreign governments buy up our debt; job creation is stagnant while bushco puts the religious-wacko kibosh on emerging technologies that will create millions of jobs...just not here; most of Europe is becoming more secular as bushco drives us back to the mindset of The Inquisition; as the rest of the world deals with real-life problems, our media serves us a never-ending diet of "reality" and celebrity pap.

We have become as decadent as ancient Rome, and we will suffer the same fate.

Joe Sixpak won't see any of this coming. Maybe it will hit him when he loses everything and takes on his new job - working for some Chinese company at Chinese wages. His only escape will be the easy comfort of religious dogma. As the rest of the world moves beyond The American Century, Joe & Jill will long for the end times to relieve them of the horror they've created for themselves by checking their brains at the door and believing the idiot and his anti-intellectual party. Of course, the end times are no more here now than they have been over the past two millenia (ref: see "Hale Bop" and "Branch Davidians").

We've become a nation of morality-on-the-cheap, enamored of the false platitudes and convenient myths that bolster our self-indulgent egos. And the sad thing is that it's all going to plan - the bushco plan for enriching the rich and screwing everyone else. Yep. * knows *exactly* what he's doing - "en raison de moi, le déluge" - to misquote another famous despot.

Heaven help us.

[TheFarseer]

14. Couldn't have said it any better myself n/t