There are days when all it takes is a single speech to illustrate the decline of a world power. A face can speak volumes, as can the speaker’s tone of voice, the speech itself or the audience’s reaction. Kings and queens have clung to the past before and humiliated themselves in public, but this time it was merely a United States president.
Or what is left of him.
George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.
He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word “terror” 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world’s attention.
America Loses Its Dominant Economic Role? I could not agree more.
Let’s start by withdrawing our 1,800 U.S. troops in Bosnia and 2,250 U.S. troops in Kosovo and let the new dominant economies secure the peace in Europe. What business is it of ours, all the way across the Atlantic, if folks in the Balkans can’t get along? In fact, why don’t we just pull out all 47,000 U.S. Army soldiers from Europe. Let the Europeans safeguard their own peace. We could also stop the missile shield we were putting in place for them, withdraw our Navy from the Mediterranean, and close all our Airforce Bases in Europe.
In light of the world’s infatuation with the Communist Chinese and their great trust of the Central Committee, we should withdraw our 2,500 U.S. Army soldiers from Japan and our 18,000 U.S. Army soldiers from South Korea. What business is it of ours? Let’s pull our Army out of anywhere that isn’t part of the United States. http://www.army.mil/aps/08/strategic_context/strategic_context.html
We have enough Nuclear weapons to kill every man, woman, and child on the face of the planet. We do not need to deploy our people around the world to protect the United States. We have enough raw materials and natural resources to be completely independent economically. We can burn coal, use geo-thermal energy, solar, wind, and bio-diesel for our energy needs. We can easily feed ourselves…and we may consider exporting food to the rest of the world, but then again, maybe we should use our excess agricultural capacity solely for our own domestic energy use.
Yes, the more I think about it, the more I can see that we should stop subjecting ourselves to the ridicule and scorn of the rest of the world. We should mind our own business.
Apologies for WW I and WW II to Europe. Sorry for the Marshall Plan, too. (We sure could have used that $12.7 Billion -1948 dollars – ourselves after the war.] That whole Cold War thing…again, sorry.
Yes, when Der Spiegel is right, they are right. Good luck with Putin.
Oops. I left out our substantial oil and gas reserves from the list of our natural resources, our timber, etc.
Sounds good to me but lets go a little further and reward our wonderful legislators who vote yes to the bailout cookie jar plan with a no vote next month.
Sick & Tired,
All government action has unintended consequences. In the examples you cite, Europe was able to use tax revenues and foreign aid to build immense welfare states rather than maintain her martial spirit and classical liberal ethos. Thus, post-modern Europe with its unionized, gay-friendly armies and cultural Marxism is powerless to defend itself against Muslim incursion. And let’s not get on too high a horse here. The US’s own military is unable to preserve America’s cultural and territorial sovereignty.
And by all means, the US should stop propping up a Muslim nation in the Serbian Orthodox heartland.
There are two ways of reading this article. (1) The article is meanly-spirited scorn of the US (2) The article is a mixture of reportage and analysis, describing a very real situation. I read it as being (2). If it is (2) then I find myself wondering why the article evokes such a visceral response among earlier posts. Are there any facts which are obviously fallacious in the report? Are there any analyses which you would dispute, and if so, on what grounds? Surely it would be wrong for the writers to ignore, or deny, the startling fact that the prestige of the US has taken a battering? Certainly there are elements of the sneer in it (eg the baggy suit gibe, which I would call poor journalism) but overall, the article conveys an uncomfortable message.
As for myself, I think that the US still possesses formidable strength, based on two factors in particular (a) freedom of speech, without which there can be no prosperity, since freedom of speech is necessary for accountability; and (b) strong faith, without which a nation loses hope and cannot face the future. Surely it would be within the best of American tradition to say that this is a moment of truth, and there are lessons to be learned.
“I find myself wondering why the article evokes such a visceral response” —Terry Tee [#5]
Perhaps because we tend to equate criticism with hostility.
Terry,
I’d substitute property rights for your (a) (so far, anyway). China, for example, is very authoritarian, but is piling up a good deal of wealth. Wealth formation also proceeded apace under Pinochet in Chile and Franco in Spain.
#5, TTee, the visceral response is natural. It’s like any family. It’s one thing for us to criticize our POTUS. It’s quite another for someone outside the family to do so. Additionally, to ignore the fact that the present POTUS is coming to the end of 8 years in office, when no POTUS has any power, and when every POTUS has aged immensely, is really poor journalism. And … for the POTUS to be the only one still talking about terrorism (if that is true), as der Speigel says, is absurd and rightfully draws criticism in contrast to the protection we have provided the Free World since WWII. Finally, speculation that US has lost its dominant role in the world is very reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter years, when liberal thoughts ruled the Congress and media. Ronald Reagan seemed to straighten that speculation out then. I suspect that those kinds of thoughts will continue in our time for a few more years, especially if Obama wins and the Democratic liberal majority continues in Congress. But if there is anything left of our country after 4 years of that sort of rule, the pendulum will swing back with a harsh vengence.
Byzantine, regarding China accruing wealth, analysts have been ruminating for some time whether China can make the next leap, from a skills-based economy to a knowledge-based economy. The former requires only cheap wages – and those will, as we know, inevitably come under pressure with time. The latter requires free exchange of knowledge – and think for example of China’s attempts to restrict the internet. So the jury is still out on that one. Billy, yes the presidency is lame duck but many of the voices cited in the article were giving warnings anything between 12 and 84 months ago. Some of the statistics, if correct, shock me – are there really 18 million empty homes in the US? Other things we already know eg China’s vast dollar holdings and the power these give that country. As for the clever-clever selling to Europe of snake oil financial instruments, perhaps Europeans have been dolts, but it does also damage the financial probity of the US in the eyes of the world. There are some very annoying bits of silliness in the article – for me the prize is this one: [the war] in Iraq, which [Bush] launched frivolously in the vain hope of converting the entire region to the American way of life but overall the article pinpoints a chemistry of what it calls avarice and greed, which became infectious both inside and outside the US. Hindsight is a great thing. But there are still lessons to be learned.
Terry Tee (#5),
I like your take on (a) freedom of speech, and (b) a strong faith. However, I think it is contradicted by the following item …
“[i] Plans to release a novel about Prophet Muhammad’s child bride A’isha have been scrapped by US publishers Random House over fears it could spark violence.
The Jewel of Medina, the debut novel by journalist Sherry Jones, was due to hit shelves on 12 August.[/i]”
Further background from Wikipedia is here …
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jewel_of_Medina
So, the fact is freedom of speech has been extinguished in the U.S. press.
As for strong faith. Yes, true, but Islam is stronger in a worldly sense.