ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, OBAMA, McCAIN AND THE BURDEN OF BUSH DOCTRINE (1)
By
Jibo Nura
Arianna Huffington's recent analyses on Obama, McCain, Biden and Palin are quite interesting. Every well meaning American who read or listened to her Larry King's live interview on McCain's republican convention speech will definitely sympathize with America and American citizens on two things. First, their position as a failed democrats nation where all democratic principles, decorum and etiquettes are no longer harmonized and permutated but intertwined with disequilibria military forces, which disproportionately act and transformed the citizenry into everlasting bamboozled generations. Second, America's situation as a warring champion has already set the world into an unprecedented violence, war and anarchy.
It could be recalled that on January 17th 1991, the U.S backed by the UN supported by over 26 countries and financed by the most powerful economies of Britain, Japan and Germany under the auspices of the so-called "Allied forces", came out en masse and waged war on an Arab nation, which according to some western writers was done "to tame the Middle East tigers". During that time the world had witnessed the raid of over 2,232 tons of explosives on an independent nation within 24 hours. A figure more than all the tonnage of bombs dropped on Vietnam for the whole of December 1972.
This war as it's fought casts a lot of doubts and aspersion in the minds of real democratic Americans who by and large were not supportive of the "grand military strategy" even at the initial stage, because they believed that it's not possible to calculate the loss and cost of the war in monetary terms.
Laughably, it was clear that after the war the so-called Allied forces emerged victorious whereas the conquered Arab people of that obliged war zone were labeled as losers even when there were no weapons of mass destruction!
However, it was because of this uncommon belief that the world community began to wonder as to whether the 1st and 2nd gulf war i.e. operation desert storm and operation desert thunder or simply called Iraq war was actually meant to liberate Kuwaiti people.
While some of us believe that violence, dispute, argument and conflict are always settled amicably; we also profoundly believe that a one-time former Chinese General, Sun Tsu said in his well known book the Art of War i.e. "In any case war should be used as the last resort in conquering life battle", because he believed in alternative dispute resolution process and/or mechanism as the only essential ingredient in winning battle without engaging opponent in single fight. This is actually the more reason why most of us see the recent Chinese President's (Hu Jintao's) visit to Bush as a slap on America's foreign policy and diplomacy. While paying homage to Bush, Hu Jintao handed over Bush the "Art of War" as a gift that would perhaps serve as a deterrent to America's war mongering attitude, which the neocons and other American republican frontiers always consider as the key to unlocking the wallet of dispute resolution between nations. They are always fond of using the "grand military strategy" to justify unnecessary actions as a means to achieving end. This "hard-earned" belief, which majority of the neocons sees as the gospel truth or simply put as "traditional doctrine", has really inflicted and is still inflicting serious diplomatic, economic, political and even social dislocations to America's lifestyle.
As it is today, some of the new neocons talents and recruits find it difficult to understand which doctrine the inner caucuses of the neocons are preaching. When most of them are fully indoctrinated into the circle, others are struggling hard to comprehend not to even talk of understanding it in its entirety. That is why when Arianna Huffington was writing in her "The Palin Doctrine: why the neocons are so excited", she completely exposed the personality in McCain's vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin.
Hear her:
"Sarah Palin may not have known what the Bush Doctrine was, but we're getting a pretty good idea of what the Palin Doctrine is. Or will be -- because it's still currently under construction. And what is it going to look like? Let's just say, it's going to seem familiar".
And of course it will be somewhat difficult for new comers such as Sarah to get this doctrine logic, especially at a time when there is a lot of pressure ad coming from the gentlemen of the press as to whether the woman really understands the Bush doctrine or not.
However, if we are to go down memory lane, Sarah may quickly grasp the rudimentary aspect of her neoconservative party doctrine that has been witch-hunting Americans since 1987 and 1990 where American Stock Exchange at Wall Street collapsed over the years and suffered strokes many more times. Nonetheless, the American dollar hitherto the safe haven for investors remain unstable, fluctuating and constantly declining until it reaches its lowest level in the near future.
Indeed, the rising interest rates, increasing cost of aviation fuel and poor credibility of American Air since 90s led to the collapse of giant American Airlines including the Continental Airline, PAN AM and the Transworld Air (TWA). In the first two months of 1991, over 20,000 employees were sacked by these Airlines and most of the other Airlines went on to receivership ready to be pawned by the Western European Airlines.
These are the more reasons why the democrats such as Obama and Biden have no choice than to come out in full force and flag off campaign fight like that of a wounded lion i.e. if at all they are serious and ready to salvage the Americans from unnecessary economic acrobatics brought about by the so-called Bush doctrine.
Jibo Nura, a political and economic commentator can be reached at: jibonura@yahoo.com