The title of the article misleadingly suggests that it is about America, when in fact it is about only the war in Iraq and written within a shortsighted perspective displaying little awareness of historical context. There is no recognition of the clash of civilizations, which is of the historical moment in which we live. War is difficult, but to presume failure on that basis is actually to wish and hope for American failure, which would be a tragedy for the world, considering the alternative of a world superpower of bloodletting fundamentalists.

The depiction of America fighting a “Christian War” is media hype. The American constitution is grounded in the separation between church and state. In contemporary America there is a cultural debate generated by a growing atheistic fundamentalism. President Bush has frequently recognized religious multiplicity in his State of the Union Address. The fact that the president is a Christian does not justify the claim that America is fighting a Christian War. In The Federalist papers, the founding fathers speak of “the divine”, but they did not speak of “Jesus”, as “Jesus” reflects a particular religion and the forefathers were concerned with assuring religious freedom and intentionally avoided references to specific religions.

As for slavery, it was not addressed by the founding fathers, for pragmatic reasons. (long before Lincoln, and Lincoln did change slavery despite the writers unsupported claims about Lincoln’s motivations). At that time, there had never been a republic as large as the proposed territory. The economy of the Southern states was dependent on slavery, and so a Union would unlikely have formulated , if the founding fathers had pushed slavery as an issue, at that time. Following the war with England the colonists were wary of big government. The defense advantage was an incentive for formulating a Union of States. Doubt was abundant that a union as large as the thirteen colonies could ever succeed.

The comment about the TV show should not have been in the article. It is fiction, hardly a reliable source for genuine “knowledge of the world”

Sorry Natural person yours was an obvious load of Christian propaganda.

The "founding fathers" of the U.S simply incorporated the British parliments muddy panacea for the Church of England Vs Catholic conflict. There is nothing enlightened about religious tolerance, religious tolerance is and has always been a politically correct term for uneasy truce. Christians wear their beliefs on their sleeves because everybody has the freedom of religion as long as it is their religion and nobody has the right to no religion. No surprise its exactly the same case within Islam. One thing for certain the belief in god has a corrupting effect on people.

The belief in Divinity is still superstition no matter how its spun or what its called. The fact is Bush believes in god which is a dangerous thing to believe if a person has even the slightest power over another. Worst still Bush belongs to the New Age prosperity cult of Pentecostalism which holds greed and self serving as core values. Worst again the same cult believes in occult magic such as pseudo science gods, messiahs, demonology and spell prayer. Worst again the same cult believes in, looks foward to and seeks to evoke the end of days.

Concerning the oil conspiracy,

Before September 11, President Bush tried to get permission to drill for oil in Alaska, for the reason given, that The United States needs to be independant of external sources for it's oil. The environmentalists stopped it, for better or for worse, but the point is that the president's goal was oil independence.

Last year oil was discovered in the Gulf of Mexico, which will take years before it can be made availble.

We currently live in an oil dependent world. This is a pragmatic fact that is handily demonized. The same critic who demonizes any pragmatic concern over oil supplies would probably be the first to blame any administration if oil became unavailable.

I don't deny that oil must need be a factor in many high level decisions, but neither do I buy into the idea that the need for oil explains all. There are other factors involved as well. Oil is just one problem, among many. It's a complex world.

I have never believed that Lincoln and the North freed the slaves for altruistic reasons. White people sent their sons to die to free black slaves? Sons they had raised and loved for umpteen years?

I'm not saying that they didnt think slavery was terrible I just dont believe they sent their sons to die for that reason.
It was a trade war. The people in the South were undercutting the prices of the produce of the people in the North and sending them broke. In other words the economy of the North was being sent to the wall by the farmers in the South who were usisng slave labour to wage a cut price trade war.

Lincoln?(not sure of spelling) in one of his speeches said "We will smash the South". Sounds more like a phrase you would use in waging an economic war than a noble phrase about freeing the slaves.

Shonga,I agree there should be movement toward alternatives, but this will take time.I think the way to go is solar but both Govt and industry won't like this since it will make the individual autonomous.You can't tax it and you can't profit from it.

Heaven forbid,we all could become lazy bums who want to spend more time with our familes,instead of working for Govt and Multi Nationals.

Actually China is embracing solar technology more than the West.They are using Australian Solar Technology to heat their water and run their air conditioners.This is where our Govts have failed us now and in the past.Our biggest nuclear power station is the Sun.

If the World continues to heat up,we could use billions of solar panels to change heat energy to kinetic energy and thus cool the planet.We could regulate our own climate using solar panels.Solar panels placed in deserts would cool the local encvironment and thus encourage water laden clouds to release their moisture,changing the local climate.Sounds far fetched,but I bet that no one has done the sums.

We need to accelerate development of solar panels since this is our most abundant pollution free energy source.

Part One

Hullo Onliners, plenty of interesting comments. But have you read Mikhail Gorbachev’s contribution in the latest Guardian?

He gives intimation about an American decline in global popularity owing to a persistent policy of unilateralism. rather than more one of multilateralism.

Gorbachev seems to believe that today’s US leaders are so full of themselves as unipolarists or unilateralists they have lost sight of a globe changing and needing multilaterlism much more than unilateralism, which gives too much appearance of America ruling the roost and holding the big end of the political stick.

After all the world has changed dramatically even when compared to the 1990s. It has become more interconnected and interdependent. New giants - China, India, and even Brazil - have entered the world arena and their views can no longer be ignored. Also Europe is gaining more pride in itself, and its political and economic influence can only but grow tremendously.

Though the Islamic world is still finding it difficult to get out of its own Dark Age owing to the rise of the former barbarian West, as so many Humanities lecturers tell us - and as Gorbachev predicts, this great civilisation will eventually again find its feet again and be treated with respect.

Gorbachev also predicts his reformed Russia will very soon again be a strong player in the international scene. Further, though he says that many critics are saying that the new Russia appears to be too quickly rejecting democracy, there are no real reasons to fear Russia in the future.

Gorbachev goes on to talk about his New World Order, but much different than that envisaged by George W Bush and Co.

It is a philosophy very much like the one suggested by the late 18th century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, whose idea of a Federation of Nations to preserve Perpetual Peace was the forerunner of not only the League of Nations but also the United Nations.