The New World Order (Tony Judt - NYRB)

[swag]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18113

(long article, well worth the read)

Excerpts:

"Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this grim story is the undisguised contempt with which the Bush administration responds to criticism. In part this is because criticism itself has become so uncommon. With rare exceptions—notably the admirable Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker—the American press has signally failed to understand, much less confront, the threat posed by this administration. Bullied into acquiescence, newspapers and television in the US have allowed the executive power to ignore the law and abuse human rights free of scrutiny or challenge. Far from defying an over-mighty government, investigative journalists were actively complicit before the Iraq war in spreading reports of weapons of mass destruction. Pundits and commentators bayed for war and sneered—as they continue to sneer—at foreign critics or dissenting allies. Amnesty International and other foreign human rights groups are now doing the work of domestic media grown supine and subservient.

Small wonder, then, that the administration and its servants treat the public (including the legislature) with such disdain. At the Senate hearings in January 2005 prior to his appointment as US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales painstakingly explained to the assembled senators that since the international Convention against Torture is subordinate to US law, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution applies only to the states and not the federal government, and the Fifth Amendment doesn't apply to foreigners detained abroad, the US has no legal obligations regarding "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment with respect to aliens overseas." Lesser breeds without the Law....

In March 2005 the US National Defense Strategy openly stated that "our strength as a nation state will continue to be challenged by those who employ a strategy of the weak using international fora, judicial processes, and terrorism." At least that makes clear who and what we regard as our enemies. Yet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice could declare in the very same month, on March 14, 2005, that "too few in the world...know of the value we place on international institutions and the rule of law." Indeed."
. . .

For there is a fundamental truth at the core of the neocon case: the well-being of the United States of America is of inestimable importance to the health of the whole world. If the US hollows out, and becomes a vast military shell without democratic soul or substance, no good can come of it. Only the US can do the world's heavy humanitarian lifting (often quite literally). We have already seen what happens when Washington merely drags its feet, as it did in Rwanda and is doing over Darfur today. If the US ceases to be credible as a force for good, the world will not come to a stop. Others will still protest and undertake good works in the hope of American support. But the world will become that much safer for tyrants and crooks—at home and abroad.

For the US isn't credible today: its reputation and standing are at their lowest point in history and will not soon recover. And there is no substitute on the horizon: the Europeans will not rise to the challenge. The bleak outcome of the recent referendums in France and the Netherlands seems likely to have the European Union as an effective international political actor for some years to come. The cold war is indeed behind us, but so too is the post–cold war moment of hope. The international anarchy so painstakingly averted by two generations of enlightened American statesmen may soon engulf us again. President Bush sees "freedom" on the march. I wish I shared his optimism. I see a bad moon rising.