General Jim Morrison, victor of the Cold War
There is now less than a year left before the national election. What is to come next will hopefully be very different. And one thing that we can all agree on is that the Bush years have been a disaster for the image of America around the world.
So what to do? What we do, is to be ourselves. We take home our armies. They really have not won wars, it was the idea of freedom that caused Eastern Europe and Russia to overthrow Communism. The only good effect that US forces in Germany could be said to have had was it showed the Soviets that further expansion in Europe was not an option.
But seeing what they could have, by observing American culture, the people of Communist Europe and Russia freed themselves.
There are some that think the Pentagon should be behind the idea to create a better PR image for the US, I say no. Let our artists do it. Take some of the best bands and send them on government sponsored tours. Send theater groups. Movies already flood the world.
People do not attack us for what we are, they attack us for what we do to them. So let us stop bombing and shooting, and instead let’s play some more music, and write more books.
Posted: January 30th, 2008 under Ain't That America, Do The Right Thing, The Big World Out There.
Comments: 3
Comments
Comment from I.B.Lever
Time: January 31, 2008, 9:21 am
Let me be the artist for a moment and I’ll try to paint a picture of the way the rest of the world sees us (America) today.
So in reality, all Bush II was doing was getting Rumsfeld to clean up the mess he helped create … OH ! , in that case I’ll overlook the outcome.
Here are the paints I chose …
washingtonpost.com: Hi Joyce. Welcome. Before we could begin maybe you could give our readers a little background about Donald Rumsfeld’s visits to Iraq in 1983 and 1984. What was he doing and why is this information relevant today?
Joyce Battle: Hello. I’m very pleased to have this opportunity to discuss some of the historical background to the U.S.’s present policy toward Iraq.
Donald Rumsfeld was sent to the Middle East as a special envoy for President Reagan in December 1983 and March 1984. At the time, he was a private citizen, but had been a high-ranking official with several Republican administrations. He had a number of items on his agenda, including conflict in Lebanon. However, one of his main objectives was to establish direct contact between President Reagan and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein — he carried a letter from Reagan to Saddam to further this process.
His trip, and other overtures by the U.S., were necessary because the Reagan administration had decided to assist Iraq in its war against Iran in order to prevent an Iranian victory, which the administration saw as contrary to U.S. interests. But until the early 1980s, U.S.-Iraqi relations had been frosty — Iraq broke off formal diplomatic relations in 1967. So in order to enable the U.S. to set up the mechanisms needed to provide Iraq with various forms of assistance, contacts had to be established, Iraq had to be removed from the State Department’s list of countries supporting terrorism, and diplomatic relations needed to be re-established (which occurred in November 1984.)
——-
Derwood, Md.: Who cares what these documents say? Iraq is the enemy of the day and needs to be dealt with.
Joyce Battle: I respectfully disagree with your point of view. In a democracy, citizens are expected to be informed about decisions that affect their own lives and that of their neighbors. If the U.S. goes to war with Iraq, many people will be put in harm’s way, and I think that we all should seek some understanding of earlier developments and policies that led us to the current situation.
—–
Wheaton, Md.: I hear pro-Saddam activists often claim that Reagan supplied Hussein with chemical weapons. I’ve seen no evidence to support these claims. Is there any truth to this?
Joyce Battle: I have not personally seen documents that indicate that the Reagan administration supplied Iraq with chemical weapons. However, the documents we recently posted on the Internet demonstrate that the administration had U.S. intelligence reports indicating that Iraq was using chemical weapons, both against Iran and against Iraqi Kurdish insurgents, in the early 1980s, at the same time that it decided to support Iraq in the war. So U.S. awareness of Iraq’s chemical warfare did not deter it from initiating the policy of providing intelligence and military assistance to Iraq. There were shipments of chemical weapons precursors from several U.S. companies to Iraq during the 1980s, but the U.S. government would deny that it was aware that these exports were intended to be used in the production of chemical weapons.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/press.htm
I’m curious as to whether McCain would get Cheney to perform the same task this time around, with Halliburton’s help of course. He could be pictured shaking Chalabi’s hand , or do we already have that photo ?
We can’t get it right we these folks at the helm, when the phuck are you going to wake up ?
There, it’s hanging on the wall for all to see, I named it “Self Destruction”, those responsible will say they were framed and this time they’ll be right.
Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: January 31, 2008, 10:32 am
In case you missed it, the cover story of this past Sunday’s NYT magazine, “Who Shrank The Superpower” by Parag Khanna, is a very important read and to Max’s point. His thesis is that there are three superpowers with three different views and approaches to the world. These three are: 1) the growing European Union with its consensus model; 2) the expanding China with its collaboration model; 3) the shrinking US with its single authoritarian model. The US is losing global market share of products and services; losing its capital dominance; and losing its ability to cooperate with and partner with other countries on a wide range of global issues.
His solutions are for the US to: 1) stop using the phrase “American national interests” and start talking about “global interests”; 2) decentralize or pentagonize the State Department using NATO as a model; 3) to one of Max’s points, deploy “march-men”, like China is doing by sending retired civil servants around the world; 4) make the global economy work for us; 5) convene a G-3 conference, suggesting an agenda, not setting it.
Fascinating stuff. It is all coming out in a book next month titled, “The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order”.
Comment from Max
Time: January 31, 2008, 4:32 pm
Josh, That was a was fascinating link. Japan’s PM has recently been taking a much more pro Chinese stance and has visited China. Makes you think.
Write a comment