Must say the last line in Ciaran’s essay added with a suggestion by John McCain that the US may have to stay in Iraq for years to come leaves one with a shaky feeling.

The gloom is especially so since though the US public is against much of America’s present foreign policy, they are unlikely to elect a female as President nor a black.

Looking back not so many years since the end of Soviet Russia, it seemed we were headed for a brighter future with lost wars like Vietnam turning people not against us but a wish to absorb part of our Western culture, as was done with Malaysia, now Indonesia, and mixed with the friendliness shown from India and China, all no doubt helped by the idea of the wonderful Marshall Plan after WW2, in which we forgave the people of Germany and Japan, rather than the dreaded way a beaten Germany was treated after WW1 with the Treaty of Versailes.

It seems the world has lost the ability to reason, lost the ability to admit to each other that each side must share the blame, which university academics write so much about but whom the public call left-wing looneys.

With the Republicans back in power in the US, one will be glad he is near the end of a lucky life, hoping to somehow join whom was the most wonderful wife, but so sad that much of the philosophy and reasoning that is readily available still in this world has been given the go-by apparently in the love of conquest, as still seems the ambitions of certain world leaders and their smaller national accomplicesses

I don't think it makes much difference who gets elected President.

All will have an expansionist and interventionist foreign policy or will be driven to adopt one. It is the nature of the beast. US imperialism is forced to dominate militarily around the world to retain its top economic position.

Having illusions in Obama is like having illusions in the ALP - they get your hopes up only to dash them in power as they run (and must do so, given the nature of the parliamentary process) the system - or rather manage the system - for the interests of capital.

If elected Obama will do the same.If he is a successful politician he may be able to balance that out with measures seen as beneficial for his supporters. That is partly what made Howard successful. He was able to bring on board a range of people who were not in his natural constituency with polices and programs that provided benefits to them. But he did not create the underlying conditions which gave him th ability to do that. He rode them.

Obama will be in a different situation. The US economy is weakening, and may continue to weaken. If not in recession it is anaemic and may stay that way for some time. So the base for spending (unless there is a fundamental re-ordering of priorities away from wars and big business, (which may be possible in relation to Iraq, but not much else), Obama won't be able to spread much largess, let alone halt the decline in job losses and improve living standards of thsoe on the minimum wage and other lowly paid workers.

Least of all will he be able to overcome the systemic racism in the US. You can only do that by challenging the very structures which create that disempowerment and poverty and Obama is certainly not going to do that.

It is a bit like Australia - the choices are really Tweedledee and Tweedledum on the big issue of retaining and strengthening the system that George W Bush gave political expression to.

I was surprised to read Ronald Reagan’s enduring influence but then thought again.

Reagan initiated the ideal of small government, which Bush1 and Clinton inherited.

Reagan initiated the Star Wars deterrent which brought down the corrupt “Evil Empire”, which had enslaved millions and cast its dark shadow across the rest of the world, since the end of WWII.

(I always liked SW, it proved a deterrent does not have to work or even exist to produce a result, it proved that fear of it as an idea in the minds of the enemy is enough and RR, who was seen as more the statesman, with the philosophical virtues at his side than a simple politician, looking for reelection, was the perfect leader to use it.)

The democrats have to go back to Kennedy to find anyone with a reputation to talk about and then, only if they ignore his sexual proclivities (like Clinton). Most have forgotten the big Peanut (Carter) and LBJ is associated with another war, his work on racial integration largely forgotten.

Passy “strengthening the system that George W Bush gave political expression to.”

Yes, the winning system, the system which prevailed over the swill of the left. The system which respects the individual to achieve in their own name and does not force them to aspire on ly to the level prescribed by the state.

So much more superior a system to anything the left has produced, regardless of the emotional rhetoric and lies of equality.

Col Rouge, as reason became a balance for faith under Aquinas, so reason is practised in our universities to bring commonsense to those who would use individualism to create elitism, spoiling a great gift to be used harmoniously rather than autocratically.

It is the right-wing US elitism you seem to support so much that we are so worried about, Col, especially with Bush and Cheney at the helm.

Indeed, if you believe this troubled world now needs years of American occupation in the Middle East, matey, reckon you need to do a course in International Relations in one of the left-wing Uni's you seem to hate so much

bushbred "Indeed, if you believe this troubled world now needs years of American occupation in the Middle East, matey, reckon you need to do a course in International Relations in one of the left-wing Uni's you seem to hate so much"

I do not know you from a dog dropping, refering to me in the familiar (matey) might conform with your sense of comradry but it does nothing for me.

I have a qualification equivalent to a Master's degree. If you want to waste your time being indoctrinated with the left wing crap , feel free but I "reckon" I have a living to earn and a life to lead.

I do not care what you "reckon" you should do. Under the system of government I support you are free to follow whatever twaddle takes your fancy and I "reckon" that is fair.

I hate no one, that people waste their HECs on learning the loopy is their stupid mistake but still their right.

Given a choice between a democratic/capitalist governmental model and the murderous and stinking cesspool, which results from the naive delusions of socialist left, I will take, with all its faults, the democratic/capitalist model.

If you do not like it, I suggest you consider migration to North Korea, it is a classic of the result of left wing socialist drivel and you can starve for as long as your body holds out.

Have you heard of the way NK prisoners are forced to kneel all day long - not quite as bad as Stalins gulags nor Lenins mass starvations but not much better either.

"Must say the last line in Ciaran’s essay added with a suggestion by John McCain that the US may have to stay in Iraq for years to come leaves one with a shaky feeling." -bushbred

General Cosgrove sais that we could be in Iraqi for decades, only days after Bush's victory speech from the US warship.

The Zealots fought the Romans for at least two hundred years, with serious wars in the 60s & 130s.

Jane Goodall is correct in saying our enemy has the ability of the Arab leadership to leverage the poor & ignorant through religion.Hence, the US and Oz should try address poverty and literacy, else it will go on and on and on