The Decline of America

We are blessed to be living in historic times.

We are blessed to be living in times when the aggressive and immoral actions of nations can be contained by the collective voice of an enlightened world community.

We are blessed to be living in times when the world’s wealthiest nations can be shamed and prodded into caring about the world’s most unfortunate beings.

We are blessed to be living in times when the world is in flux and great good is within our reach.

We are living in times when the world’s most formidable power is floundering, bogged down in a Middle East quandary, stumbling on its own arrogant defiance of international law, order and convention.

We are witnessing the end of an American era. Whether by chance or the unfathomable law of destiny, with the demise of the Soviet Union, we were handed the mantle of the planet’s dominant power. We were given a chance to lift up the world’s oppressed peoples, to strike down acts of aggression and inhumanity, to banish hunger, genocide and disease, to end planetary dependence on poisonous fossil fuels, to spread the wealth and close the gap between poverty and affluence.

What have we done with that awesome power? We have consolidated capital in the hands of those who need it least. We have ignored genocide in Africa while intervening in a bloody Balkans civil war on the false pretext of genocide. We have promised unlimited resources to fight AIDS, starvation and disease, while compromising our generosity by tying aid to free trade agreements, acceptance of genetically modified foods, and Puritanical notions of birth control. We have sanctioned unspeakable crimes against humanity, toppled democratic governments, sponsored terrorism, supported tyrants and occupations, triggered a revival of the arms race, and lowered the threshold of war. We have turned our backs on global climate change, international justice and the Geneva conventions.

We have gone to war with two sovereign nations where diplomacy would have settled the issues and achieved our stated objectives without a devastating loss of life. That we have done so in the name of freedom, justice and democracy only exacerbates our shame.

We were given a sacred trust. The ball was in our court and we dropped it. Like so many before us, we squandered our riches on foolish adventures.

The time is past to undo the harm. The opportunity that was ours will not likely come again. The world has moved on. The balance of powers has once again shifted. Asia and Europe have risen to challenge our economic prominence. If it has not already, our military extravagance will become a dead weight hastening our demise.

For the world, the way forward is clear. Democracy will march on not because of our actions but despite them. Europe will lead the way and the ironies are rich: Democracy is good business because it ties nations together while tyranny isolates. Building a strong middle class and caring for the poor is also good business because it creates markets and mediates discontent.

In the long term, Europe will lead the Middle East to an enlightened social democracy and Russia will follow.

In the short term, we can only hope that the blowback from our misadventures can be contained. We have transformed a dangerous terrorist organization into a worldwide Islamic jihad. Where only a threat existed before our actions, we have created a movement and a cause. In place of two oppressive regimes, we have produced two dysfunctional states.

What price democracy? A hundred thousand lives? A million?

Our hearts go out to the people of Iraq. After all this bloodshed, what did the election produce? If it results in anything but Shiite control, we will know it was fixed. If Alawi or Chalabi emerge on top, they may fool the American media but they will not fool the Iraqi people. The government will have no credibility.

The measure of an independent government in Iraq, beholden to no one but the people, is its willingness to demand a withdrawal of American forces. They must build an army whose only loyalty is to Iraq, who will oppose both the occupation and those among the insurgents who have declared war on democracy. The Iraqi forces must stand apart from the occupying army and the Iraqi government must demand control of its own resources, dismantling of all American military bases, and the illegality of all contracts with the occupying power.

To those who suggest that the Bush administration secretly wants an excuse to withdraw from Iraq, you underestimate the ideological intransigence of the neocons. They want it all. To those who suggest that the administration wants civil war as an excuse to remain in Iraq indefinitely, you may well be right.

We call upon the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who singularly forced the occupiers to hold elections by bringing thousands to the streets in protest, an act of defiance braver than the protesters in Ukraine, to demand that the new National Assembly take an immediate vote on the occupation before proceeding to its assigned task of writing a constitution.

It will be difficult. It may be impossible. Such is the nature of quagmire. Nevertheless, it is the way forward and, in the end, justice, democracy and the Iraqi people will win.

Jazz.

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