cloudboy
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Joined: 12/14/2005
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quote:
ORIGINAL: caitlyn
I don't believe that Americans are overly nationalistic. What I believe is that Americans are frustrated by constant criticism by those that have no better alternative to offer.
I beg to differ. Americans, without a doubt, are excessively nationalistic and ignorant of other cultures. This is a huge problem, and its on widescreen, HD display at the Whitehouse. (Before taking office, GWB has never left the USA.)
GWB has gotten eight (8) years in office not because of his competency, but because of his propoganda skills. He and his team are skilled manipulators --- and his detractors have been defanged precisely because of the logic you cite above, "Americans are frustrated by constant criticism by those that have no better alternative to offer."
Legitimate dissent and legitimate criticisms have been reduced too whining, "undermining the war on terror," "not supporting the troops," "voting for Bin Laden," and / or "supporting a policy of 'cut and run.'"
The question smarter people need to ask themselves is, does might make right? Cheney & Co. seemed to think so regarding IRAQ, so US action there seems a prime case study for the question:
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>Many reasons have been advanced for why Bush decided to attack Iraq, a third-rate Arab dictatorship that posed no threat to the United States. Some have argued that Bush and Cheney, old oilmen, wanted to get their hands on Iraq's oil. Others have posited that the neoconservative civilians in the Pentagon, Wolfowitz and Feith, and their offstage guru Richard Perle, were driven by their passionate attachment to Israel. Suskind does not address these arguments, and his own thesis does not rule them out as contributing causes. But he argues persuasively that the war, above all, was a "global experiment in behaviorism": If the U.S. simply hit misbehaving actors in the face again and again, they would eventually change their behavior. "The primary impetus for invading Iraq, according to those attending NSC briefings on the Gulf in this period, was to create a demonstration model to guide the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons or, in any way, flout the authority of the United States." This doctrine had been enunciated during the administration's first week by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who had written a memo arguing that America must come up with strategies to "dissuade nations abroad from challenging" America. Saddam was chosen simply because he was available, and the Wolfowitz-Feith wing was convinced he was an easy target.
The choice to go to war, Suskind argues, was a "default" -- a fallback, driven by the "realization that the American mainland is indefensible." America couldn't really do anything -- so Bush and Cheney decided they had to do something. And they decided to do this something, to attack Iraq, because after 9/11 Cheney embraced the radical doctrine found in the title of Suskind's book. "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response," Suskind quotes Cheney as saying. And then Cheney went on to utter the lines that can be said to define the Bush presidency: "It's not about our analysis, or finding a preponderance of evidence. It's about our response."
This bizarre statement, in which might not only makes right but actually makes reality, recalls the infamous words of the anonymous Bush official who told Suskind for a New York Times Magazine article that the Bush administration made its own truth by acting, which those in the impotent "reality-based" community would have to come to terms with. Behind it is the notion that America is both omnipotent and infallible. No matter what it does, it is always right, and even if it makes a mistake it is impervious to harm. This quasi-theological mind-set, which as Suskind shows tracks perfectly with Bush's religio-patriotic fervor and Karl Rove's political strategy, allowed Cheney and Bush to believe that they could send 130,000 U.S. troops into the heart of the Arab world without negative consequences.
Since America's cause was by definition righteous and invincible, no "analysis" was necessary. But since the Bush-Cheney team still had to deal with a public that, not being part of the Elect, might not understand the holy truth, a kind of divine deception had to be practiced. Any facts that would reveal the war to be based not on an actual threat, but on Bush's gut and Cheney's crazed doctrine, had to be suppressed or replaced with better ones. This meant, among many other things, intimidating and squelching all intelligence analysts who pointed out the inconvenient truth that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Suskind is not the first to reveal this, but his reporting brings alive just how viciously persistent Cheney and Rumsfeld were in trying to construct a false reality that would justify their desired war<
http://www.salon.com/books/review/2006/06/23/suskind/print.html
< Message edited by cloudboy -- 7/7/2006 4:56:00 AM >
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RE: What influences world opinion on the US...does it m... - 
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