|
October 21, 2004
It is difficult to judge the US Presidential elections from Australia and I struggle to interpret the significance of the opinion polls.
What I hear here in Australia is the strong rhetoric of freedom, fighting tyranny, liberating the enslaved peoples of the world and bringing democracy to the Middle East. I also hear the voices that express a fear of foreigners, American chauvinism and a belligerence that finds criticism had to accept. What links the two is Middle America; an America that accepts the assaults on American liberties in the name of security or patriotism. A middle America that accepts the national security state, is easy with the US being a global power, and comfortable with a global power losing its heart and minds war in Iraq and turning the US into an armed fortress.
I cannot make much sense of it all against a backdrop of a sanitised rosy image of Iraq and the chaotic dangerous violence on the ground.
Has Middle America public grown tired of a war whose rationale has disappeared along with the weapons of mass destruction. I have no idea. I hope that Bush does not win. I mostly recoil from a political rhetoric animated by a kind of fear and political anxiety,and talks about foreign policy in terms of crusades against evil doers. I hope Kerry wins but I fear Bush will.
I am pretty much in accord with Alan Ryan writing in the New York Review of Books. He says:
"From almost anywhere outside the United States, it is impossible to understand how Mr. Bush has even a remote chance of reelection. In most of Europe, two thirds of the population has never weakened in its opposition to the war in Iraq—not out of affection for Saddam Hussein, but out of a well-founded understanding that Iraq was irrelevant to the war on terrorism until President Bush turned the country into a terrorist's playground."
Ryan says that many see President Bush is a threat to world security. He goes on to say that on the domestic front:
"Under President Bush, the US economy has shed jobs; there are fewer Americans employed today than when he took office; fewer Americans have guaranteed health care than when he took office; his tax cuts amount to the organized looting of the public purse for the benefit of his friends and funders; and his fiscal irresponsibility makes Ronald Reagan look a model of prudence."
So how come Bush will be re-elected?
|
Apart from the normal cheer squad of Howard, Tony Blair and Tim Blair's troglodytes, it is hard to find anyone outside the US who does not shake their head in wonderment that Bush has the slightest chance of re-election.
Perhaps the post-US 'China Century' may arrive sooner than predicted.