America and Global Order

[unhappycamper]

http://watchingamerica.com/News/241546/america-and-global-order/



Mr. Cheney’s idea of global order stems from a sense of American entitlement—evangelical, imperialist and racist. Legitimate global order can derive only from the U.N.

America and Global Order
Le Temps, Switzerland
By Frederic Koller
Translated By Joshua Kirby
21 June 2014
Edited by Lau­rence Bouvard

Is U.S. domination necessary for world order? Dick Cheney, the former American vice president, continues to insist so. This neoconservative architect of policy in the George W. Bush era claims that the current resident of the White House is getting it wrong. Is he?

~snip~

Mr. Cheney, the man who governed the U.S.A. during the Bush years, would have us believe that the dramatic resurgence of Salafist jihadi movements in the Middle East is attributable to the culpable inaction of the White House and its current resident’s preference for talking to enemies rather than bolstering allies. The former vice president would also have us believe that the Iraq war begun in 2003 achieved its aims: Those of reinforcing America’s global leadership and stopping al-Qaida.

As the European accomplices of this neoconservative policy are getting their voices back—not least Tony Blair, who recently published a frankly pathetic article in the press— it is worthwhile reminding ourselves of certain facts concerning the American intervention in Iraq: No war since Vietnam has damaged the American leadership to such an extent; the intervention’s primary beneficiaries have been Shi’ite Iran and Communist China, now the world’s primary importer of Iraqi crude oil; Iraq, free from Salafist fighters before 2003, is now the epicenter of the jihadi movement, which, having flooded into Syria, is now reentering Iraqi lands; the Bush regime, by overthrowing a tyrannical regime on a false pretext, has besmirched the idea of liberty; lastly, the democracy implanted into Iraq has proved itself to be a failed state, due to the simple fact that it wasn’t born of an aspiration of the Iraqi people, but imported by bombs.

We might also mention the cost of this war—$35 000 of spending per American household—and the subsequent weakening of the U.S.A., or the number of Iraqi civilian victims—500,000 according to certain counts. It is in the light of this disaster that Barack Obama’s foreign policy, especially in regard to the Middle East, must be judged.