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The Forum > Article Comments > The US will be judged by Clio, the muse of history > Comments

The US will be judged by Clio, the muse of history : Comments

By Steven Siak, published 14/1/2005

Steven Siak argues that the American public will be judged after re-electing President Bush for a second term.

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excellent
Posted by Kenny, Friday, 14 January 2005 1:54:32 PM
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Doesn't democracy make you sick?! Get over it!
Posted by bozzie, Friday, 14 January 2005 6:43:11 PM
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So, let me get this straight Dr. Steve - Bush is the new Hitler, and the majority of Americans are ignorant fools who don't know what's good (or bad) for them. No wonder the Democrats where annihilated in November. Such breath-taking arrogance! We're talking about a whole vineyard of sour grapes here! Imagine the pain this poor man is going through, just imagine what it must be like, being the very giant of the moral and intellectual elite and being surrounded by apes, morons, people worse than nazis and worse still, having to call them "countryman"! A few more votes the other way and I imagine Dr Steve would have these very same people as superior human beings of great compassion and intellect. They might even have been good enough for him to talk to! (Apart from the usual, "don't crash the car when you park it" & "make sure these shoes are clean before I check out").

The west is probably beginning its decline, but it's being bought about by poor-loser whiners like Dr Steve and his arrogant superior ilk.
Posted by Cranky, Saturday, 15 January 2005 1:13:23 AM
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Steven Siak notes, and Clio would most certainly agree, that like all e all dynamic entities, empires are born, rise to maturity, decline and finally pass away. The 'American empire' that he so hates, however, is not an empire constructed in the old ways of empire - the Roman empire, for example, or more pertinently the British or French empires. It will not 'pass away' in terms that history has hitherto understood, since the world is now a massively interacting global economy. It certainly won't die as a direct result of the current president of the United States taking executive action against Iraq - ill advisedly or otherwise - in the face of the supine ill will of indolent continental European nations or the astonishingly solid record of failure on the part of the United Nations to do anything much about anything. John Kerry lost the US election because not enough Americans were persuaded to vote for him and his policies. That's called democracy, Steven. Live with it, mate ... as Churchill observed, it's the worst system of government, except for all the others.
Posted by Scribe, Monday, 17 January 2005 1:44:33 PM
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Let's roll back time a little bit. It is 1945, and WW2 is over. Over 50 mil people died. Europe has self destructed after two times a WW.
The American empire has just beaten the German one. The British one is on the decline, and the Dutch make a last attempt to hang on to Indonesia ...

Then we have the universal declaration of human rights ... but the USA goes blasting away some rocks in the Pacific. After all, we need to make sure them bombs we dropped on Japan would work elsewhere.
After horrific experiments on people in Europe and Asia, the newly establish American empire does some human experiments. Why tell those worried citizens?
Then there is bringing freedom to Vietnam, since the French mucked it up obviously, oops who cares we just want to stop communism, right? Since the Cold War is on, let's support some nasty dictators in our back yard, we don't want any more Castros whacking our friends like Batista.

Now roll forward time back to the near present.

Following an attack on Sep 11, 2001, the world supports the USA against the reputed braims behind the attack, who happens to be in hiding in Afghanistan.

The American empire starts a war against a dictator in Iraq based on shaky legal foundations, but not to worry, ... who can possibly harm the USA. After all we got more carrier battle groups, stealth bombers, than any one ... and we did not sign up for the International Criminal Court, just like Iraq, and other abusers of human rights. Fighting in Iraq is over officially, but people continue to die. What is 40000 or 98000 casualties in such a large country? We are bringing freedom, and taking back bloody cheap oil for our SUVs, Hoo-aah. Embedded reporters will never tell. And if it is not American, it must be international, and be bad. Give or take our butler (Bliar) and the cricket batsman from Australia (cHoward).
Holding people without charges or trial. If it is a muslim, it must be dangerous, let's blast it first, Gitmo it or Abu Graib it. Or alternatively let's fly them pigs to a country where we know they'll torture the truth out of them. It worked during the Inquisition, right? In the mean time we can fly the national flag all the time, and sing the lord's praises at ceremonies across the country every Sunday.
The German SS also had something like Gott mit uns on their belt buckles, and lots of flag waiving and ceremonies, no?

Moreover, check out the UN Human Development Indicators (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDI), there is more to life than plastic and money, like healthcare, ...

Sounds like an empire in (moral) decline to me. And in the absence of a worse threat, world scrutiny turns on the hyperpower of the day. Thank God the American 20th century is over.
Posted by MX, Monday, 17 January 2005 10:59:06 PM
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