Gul Jammas Hussain / Tehran Times Opinion Column – 2007-08-23 00:15:52
http://www.mehrnews.com/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=539612
TEHRAN, Aug. 22 (MNA) — With a huge economic, democratic, and moral deficit since World War II and a tainted conscience, ironically the United States may lose its superpower status while trying to pull off another ‘democracy promoting’ project.
Under the influence of members of the Zionist lobby like AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee), should the U.S. make the mistake of attacking another country in the name of its ‘war on terror’, it would be making a suicidal mistake.
US officials are being seduced into adopting the same misguided policies that caused the downfall of the empires of lore.
Using the UN Security Council as a handmaid, the United States has flouted the Nuremburg Principles, showed shameless disdain for the Kyoto Protocol, and made a mockery of the UN Charter to implement its interventionist policy. Its brazen realpolitik contrasts with its own Declaration of Independence, which calls for a “decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”
Since the end of the Cold War, its megalomania, coupled with paranoia about being destroyed, has thrown the world puppeteers into desperation.
The United States’ dance macabre on our planet since World War II has been part of its plan to establish itself as the global hegemon, with total disregard for the dire consequences for the oppressed masses.
For six decades, it has been sniffing around to see if any country is showing any teeth. Literary critic Bruce Franklin described the process, saying: “We are just about to be destroyed by evil monsters, when at the last minute we are miraculously saved by a superhero or super weaponry. Furthermore, rather typically, the evil monsters are those we are crushing under foot: Indians, Blacks, and Chinese.”
Therefore, the United States’ ‘promotion of democracy’ may well be taken as a euphemism for “Exterminate all brutes” — the postscript of Kurtz’s seventeen-page report “The Suppression of Savage Customs” in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
The U.S. plunged into the Vietnam War, supposedly to help the locals ward off the Red Menace. Apart from costing the United States the loss of 58,209 lives and $584 billion (in current dollars) as war expenses, the Vietnam War resulted in the lowest ever morale of U.S. soldiers, who began refusing to fight because they felt they had no cause or moral justification
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Green Peril was introduced as the new bogeyman, threatening not only the United States but the entire Western world.
After 9/11, the Al-Qaeda phantom gave the U.S. an excuse to bomb the rubble of one of the poorest countries on the face of the earth and occupy it.
The next villain was Saddam Hussein, who had been a longtime ally of the United States.
Yet the specter of WMDs that was used to topple Iraq’s Baathist regime pales into insignificance in comparison with the devastation wrought by the atomic bombs used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq, two million people have fled, and more than two million are internally displaced. The U.S. military’s daily slaughter of civilians in Iraq and the dark forces that arrived with the foreign occupation have brought the country to the brink of catastrophe.
US forces will definitely leave Iraq one day, but the contamination caused by the use of depleted uranium munitions will stay for 4.5 billion years.
After over four years, the cost of the Iraq war has reached nearly $500 billion. The ultimate figure could reach $1.2 trillion or more.
In total, the Bush administration’s twin occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq and its so-called ‘war on terror’ will have cost at least $690 billion by the end of next year.
While wars are crippling the U.S. economy and its combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, China is fast emerging as a multidimensional superpower. The United States’ annual trade deficit with China is an incredible $233 billion while its global current-account deficits reached $763.6 billion in late 2006.
With a stunning 11.9% economic growth rate and $180 billion global current-account surplus, China will surely be the biggest challenger to the so-called sole superpower.
In addition, under the dynamic leadership of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s star is rising economically and militarily. Putin’s commissioning new ICBMs specifically designed to evade a U.S. missile defense shield and ordering the Russian air force to resume the Cold War practice of long-range flights by strategic bombers speak volumes about Russian designs for the future.
And the joint Sino-Russian military maneuver in the Ural Mountains watched by Putin and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao is a sign of a sea change.
After the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, the leaders of the SCO countries warned the U.S. to stay away from the energy-rich and strategic region.
So, will the United States be able to maintain its superpower status?
Most probably not, unless it works through partnerships and collaborations with the comity of nations, not through wars, brinksmanship, and threats.
The road taken by the US security team will determine whether the United States temporarily avoids the fate of previous empires or is tossed into the dustbin of history, the victim of its own devious machinations.
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