The Iraq Mess and America's Image in the World
It is difficult to grasp the mess that the Bush Administration has created by sheer incompetence in handling Iraq. Things would not be that bad if we didn't face a future in which terrorist, emboldened by this failure, will attempt further attacks on us.
America is the richest country and the most sophisticated high-tech military in the world. Yet we are being exhausted by insurgents with AK-47 rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and improvised bombs. With strong pressure on our lame duck President to withdraw from Iraq, jihadist, Muslim militants, Al-Qaeda and the like scent a victory as momentous and great as the eviction of the Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989, a defeat that helped dissolve the Soviet empire.
True, we have recovered from previous defeat and disasters (not least the Vietnam war, Lebanon, Somalia and the like). But our military troubles come at a time when the global strategic balance appears to be tilting away from America. Iran is filling the vacuum created in Iraq, and is accelerating its nuclear program. China's military punch is growing along with its booming economy. Russia is more beligerant. The NATO alliance is loveless (thanks, again, to Iraq). Across the world, anti-Americanism has increased to the point where our country is regarded as a threat to world peace rather than its guarantor.
You have to wonder whether the Iraq war has damaged our country so badly as to set us on a path to "imperial decline". Thanks to Bush and Co., it looks like if the American era in the Middle East is soon to be over, and because of the importance of the Middle East, American global power has also been weakened, for years if not for decades.
Assigning blame, to be honest, not everything happened during Dubya's watch: All the Presidents after the collapse of the Soviet Unuion are to blame for wasting America's moment of unipolar supremacy in the world. George Bush senior handled the fall of the Soviet empire with delicacy but failed to exploit the victory against Saddam in Kuwait to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict once for all. Bill Clinton vacillated similarly. George junior is the worst with his catastrophic and myopic leadership. Shame, to the point that the most powerful image of America is no longer the Statue of Liberty, but the prison camp at Guantanamo.
Unless the next elected President takes urgent steps to restore the political and moral standing of our country, the crisis of America could become terminal and the era of American dominance will be shortened.
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