Outside View: Wasting America's morality

[not systems]

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20050808-040413-4015r

By Alon Ben-Meir
UPI Outside View Commentator
Published August 8, 2005

NEW YORK -- America's ascent to superpowerdom is one of the most significant events in history since the rise of the Roman Empire. No nation or combination of nations has a greater capacity for good and evil or exercises greater influence on other nations than does the United States today.

Superpowerdom, however, offers not only the opportunity for global leadership, it involves a heavy responsibility in the exercise of such formidable power. For the United States to maintain global leadership, it must earn the moral authority to lead. Tragically, by pursuing misguided foreign policy objectives, the Bush administration has squandered much of America's moral leadership, with the ensuing damage yet to be contained.

...

As long as this administration refuses to admit to its mistakes and to pursue its current policies, specifically relating to Iraq, the so-called war on terrorism, the proliferation of WMD, and human rights, America's star will steadily dim. It will be only a matter of time before other nations will join together and successfully challenge U.S. supremacy. The United States cannot continue to squander its moral authority and then demand or count on the rest of the world's allegiance.

...
If Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo were not enough, this administration has granted itself extraordinary rights of rendition -- sending suspected terrorists to countries with weak laws against torture such as Egypt, Lybia, and Saudi Arabia, knowing that they will be subjected to subhuman conditions to force them to give up information. But the administration's hypocrisy has no limits: How does an administration that condemns violence, especially indiscriminate violence, drop napalm bombs on combatants, killing scores of civilians in the process in Fallujah?

Such actions not only erode the morale of U.S. forces in Iraq, they are a stain on America's honor, as one State department official candidly acknowledged. These transgressions and the administration's lack of transparency about its own human rights record severely undermine America's moral global standing and encourage other nations to commit the same or even worse human rights abuses with impunity.

Arrogant and self-centered: While the administration's misguided and arrogant policies deplete America's moral capital, there seems to be no effort by it to examine what went wrong and what can be done differently. The administration takes other nations for granted or reduces its relations with them to the simplistic slogan of their being "with us or against us."

...
I have no hope that the administration will redeem itself by changing its policies, approach, or intentions, and so America's moral standing will undoubtedly suffer additional setbacks. In the face of this reality, I remain hopeful, nevertheless, that the damage to America's moral standing will be contained. I believe in America's inner strength, the ingenuity of its people, and the core values of the Constitution. These fundamentals hopefully will save America from the mishaps of this administration. In the end, the United States will reclaim its rightful place and become a "true light unto other nations". But first, the American people must awaken, throw the neoconservatives out of office and elect different leaders who truly seek a return to these fundamental values.

[Maraya1969]

1. Nominated - this sums it up perfectly

[DELUSIONAL]

2. Absolute Power corrupts absolutely

and when someone of the low intellectual & moral stature of bushie is appointed to the office of the residency of the white house -- plus the mechanism of checks & balances has been thwarted -- the best of humans would be corrupted.

Any moral authority America once had is gone -- but perhaps the true character of America has been exposed? From the American holocaust starting with Columbus when upward of 50 millions Indians were murdered, starved, poisoned, infected with smallpox -- to the "cleansing" of Fallujah --- America just ain't so moral.

[rodeodance]

3. "the capacity for good or evil"--seems for the most part--we choose

'evil' (our leaders have).

.....No nation or combination of nations has a greater capacity for good and evil or exercises greater influence on other nations than does the United States today.

[checks-n-balances]

4. Amazingly, this excellent article comes from UPI, owned by Rev. Moon

and the author is an "outsider" - sounds like he could be from Israel, the one place that has unquestioned/unwavering U.S. support. To advocate that we "throw the neoconservatives out of office" takes real guts within that news organization.

Probably the only thing the neocons were ever right about was that we are obviously the world's only "superpower." But the way they advocate using that power is totally irresponsible . The author is right on when he says, "For the United States to maintain global leadership, it must earn the moral authority to lead."

I guess that's hard to do when your only definition of "moral" is witin the realm of personal behavior. That definitiion is meaningless when set withi the context of this administration and, ironically, immoral behavior on the national level still points to the immorality of those who participate in it.

This author gets it, and I wish more of the American public would do likewise.

[Moderator]

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[Peace Patriot]

6. "...throw the neoconservatives out of office and elect different leaders"

Easier said than done.

58% of the American people opposed the Iraq war BEFORE the invasion. This stat stuck to my brain like superglue. Feb. '03. Across the board in all polls. Before all the lies were exposed, before the true costs and horror of it were known. 58%!

63% of the American people oppose torture UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. May '04. That's the America I know and love--a people who are not easily scared, and who stick to their sense of justice, ethics and lawfulness, despite relentless fearmongering.

Interesting. Name the issue. The Iraq war. Torture. Social Security. The deficit. Women's rights. The American people oppose Bush policy on it, way up in the 60% to 70% range.

More than that, Bush's personal approval rating was so low over the whole of last year that Zogby said he couldn't win. A mere 49% on the very day of his inauguration. 40% today.

And these are all news monopoly polls--always tweaked to some degree toward the values of the rich and powerful, war profiteering, and predatory capitalism.

Something wrong with this picture. Why--if 60% to 70% of the American people oppose every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, and he is the most unpopular president in U.S. history (49% on inauguration day is unprecedented!)--is Bush and his Cartel still in office?

It's not as if the Democrats didn't make an effort--at least the grass roots of the party. The Dems blew the Repubs away in new voter registration in 2004, nearly 60/40. And the great majority of these new voters voted for Kerry, as did the independent voters, and the former Nader voters. The Gore repeat voters, who'd been cheated in 2000, were the ones who got all their non-voting family members, co-workers and friends to register and vote for the first time. "Most important election in our history." High motivation to oust Bush. Thousands upon thousands of small donations kept Kerry/Edwards competitive with the Bush money machine throughout the campaign. People kept donating all the way through election night, when they flooded the Dem coffers with donations in response to a plea for legal funds to insure that "every vote would be counted."

"...the American people must awaken...". Uh-huh. They stood in ten hour lines to vote these S.O.B.'s out of the office. Biggest turnout in history, always bad for Republicans. All the exit polls said Kerry won. But they changed those numbers--falsified them--on everybody's TV screens on election night. They "adjusted" the exit polls to "fit" the "official result," which was fed to them by two companies, both run by Bushites, who were permitted to use secret, proprietary programming code to tabulate all the votes.

"Trade secret" programming code for how they counted the votes. Disguising the only independent information--the exit polls--to make it look like Bush won that tally. All the networks, all the news monopolies, acting in concert. So people didn't know. They were denied major evidence of election fraud.

Some curious reporter asked Karl Rove how they won. His reply: They had an "invisible' get out the vote campaign. Cheney said it was in the churches. "Invisible." Faith-based reporting. No follow up. Never look at the actual numbers of your own news monopoly polls. Never add anything up.

"...the American people must awaken...". We already did, long ago, way back in Feb. '03, when 58% of the people were unwilling to trust Bush's word on WMDs even before he was proven to be a baldfaced liar. Contrary to the wisdom of all the pontificators in the world, we are not asleep. What we are is DISENFRANCHISED.

Very practical problem. Bushite companies--mainly Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia--have gotten control the vote count with secret, proprietary software. Big business deals--$4 billion to the states from Bush's "pod people" in Congress. Bipartisan corruption. Not a peep out of the Democrats on Bushites counting all our votes behind closed doors. Congress ain't gonna fit it. We have to.

It's not that you're asleep. It's that you don't know what the hell to do. This is it. This is what you can do. We still have some influence at the state/local level, where control over election systems still resides. Restore out right to vote! --and then we will...

"...throw the neoconservatives out of office and elect different leaders" pronto.

Next problem: bust up the news monopolies, and reclaim our public airwaves.

[DELUSIONAL]

7. My concern is that the voter turnout in 06 and 08 will be low

There is the belief (correct probably) that votes were not counted.

I've talked to so many people about voting -- and many made a huge effort to vote for Kerry -- or against bushie -- and they will NOT vote again. They know their vote was stolen and they can't see any reason to make the effort to vote again -- in the current climate of vote rigging -- election theft and black box voting.

The county where I live has just notified all voters that future elections will be via mail in ballots. This is the way my husband and I have been voting for years.

And yet I am hearing young people say -- why bother to vote. These are kids who are computer literate and know how easy it is to hack the vote -- and they believe that the vote was hacked in 2004.

When corporations count the vote (using secret software) -- democracy loses.