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Re: [casi] USA: An administration that thinks and acts as a child



In a message dated 9/22/2003 8:58:47 AM Eastern Daylight Time, smitra@zonnet.nl writes:

> Already many countries have said No to the US.
>
> The US hasn't got the UN resolution on post war Iraq it
> wants.
>
> No one is going to pay the 85 billion dollar bill on behalf
> of the US.

Better than nothing but not the consistently spoken NO that is necessary. Diplomacy is great, but 
at some point the verbal dance must end.

The US can pay the 85 billion dollar bill, plus have more than enough left over to pay bribes to 
nations around the world for various concessions. The American people and the Congress are 
responsible for holding the Bush Administration accountable for that bill.

However, many of the things for which the US is criticized were and are only possible with a lot of 
passive and/or active collaborators.  The system which the US uses to cause harm across the world 
was in place long before the US even became a country. It is the same system that France uses to 
manage the Francophonie, that England uses to manage the Commonwealth.  There is less battle 
between such Western powers about the system of exploitation itself than there is about "Old 
Europe" being bitter that it is being displaced at the top of the heap by its "New World" child, 
the US. The US is following in its parent's footsteps.

There is no shortage of hypocrisy among various groups of people angry about the US, but benefiting 
from the same post-colonial system of their own nations in their own ways. If the US, like the 
European nations that as long ago as the partition of Africa learned to not to fight but to share 
the spoils of 'conquest', shared the benefits of its power rather than lorded them over the other 
Western nations, there would be far less outcry about its behavior. Both from the governments and 
from the people of those nations. Such nations and peoples were so used to their own dominance that 
they have forgotten how they got it, how they keep it and simply bask in the glow that it 'is.'  
The US upsets that image.

And what of the "Middle East?" So many Arab nations play the game of complaining along with their 
populations about the US favoritism towards Israel, yet they make sure to line up for the payoffs 
and back-room negotiations that give wide-berth to US troops stationed through the region for not 
just the attack on Iraq, but for the simple display of military power.

The NO must come not only to the US - but to the Western Nations in whose footsteps it follows.

N

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