Bush Has No Foreign Policy

[CHIMO]

President George W. Bush and his tightknit group of close advisers don't believe in formulating or implementing a foreign policy. This was the case in Bush's first term, and will most likely be so in his second. The White House is far more concerned with establishing permanent Republican rule at home than interacting with or reshaping the outside world according to a carefully conceived plan. It was only Sept. 11 that forced the Bush administration into its confused and violent involvement in foreign affairs. But the so-called war on terror, a term so vague as to be incomprehensible, reflects not a foreign policy, but a haphazard reaction to an unexpected and tragic event.

As for the U.S. misadventure in Iraq, the evidence grows daily that it was anything but the result of a clear policy. The muddled neoconservative ideas about spreading democracy in the Middle East from the barrel of a gun used by Bush and his advisers to justify the invasion ex post facto are an intellectual fig leaf that can't hide the administration's failure to find the weapons of mass destruction that supposedly were the reason to lead the nation into a senseless war in the first place.

Additionally, there is an ingrained, widespread belief, among certain segments of the U.S. population, in American exceptionalism -- a perceived national uniqueness that allows America, including its language, to ignore the rest of the world. "If English was good enough for Jesus," said the Texas governor, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, about 80 years ago, "it's good enough for us." As a corollary to this belief, we have what American historians call manifest destiny, the relentless U.S. westward expansion across the North American continent, which was based not on a master strategy, but rather on the mass movement of aggressive, self-reliant, individualistic, sanctimonious and occasionally generous settlers toward the Pacific Ocean.

Bush and his White House advisers, however, reflect and support another tradition, the deep-seated American notion that the nation needs no foreign policy because aliens are of no essential importance to a continent-country except when they threaten it. Despite increased globalization and mass communications breaking down national barriers, this was Bush's viewpoint during his first term, and it will continue to be the starting point for his administration's overseas priorities for the next four years, unless global events, especially in the economic sphere, force him and his parochial White House entourage to realize that America is only a small part of humanity and cannot survive without it.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2005/01/21/006.html

[ixion]

1. BushCo foriegn policy:

Kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out. :-(

[PATRICK]

2. Bigger picture

Any of the dolts in the so-called American leadership or intelligence community could see things more plainly without their prejudice and arcane materialistic drives.

America dominates as a tyrannical hypocrisy run by private business, the world corporations can rejoice in being given their "freedom" over local hegemonies. America crumbles as the ludicrous empire bubble collapses, these same powers win again as the arsenal of democracy is reduced to a sour ring of a-bombs at the beck and call of themselves or as fear targets to play the world like Bushco played its own people.

Real American interests can never be served no matter how much madness is pumped into the game. The win-win is for the usual cast of global villains with the political pretensions of various national leaders as a dismal show of petty delusions such as has distinguished human history since the invention of despotry.

To keep the rising global communication between the "people", the education and the sanity and the progress under check, madness, thuggery and chaos is recalled to the world stage like Satan unleashed- all in the various guises of religious fundamentalism. Fundamentally it is the base character of "fallen, never to rise, man as Milton's Satan in cheap clothes that is likewise attempting to hijack hope.

Bush's petty plans like some quantum physics magic wish, tweaking a balance of reality and unreality with raw power is doomed or dooming. Why has he not been really opposed? The people who profit from the madness are intoxicated by the temptations and consoled by the prospect of its failure and the removal of America as the giant of liberty and justice from the robber baron's stage.