[Nettime-bold] 21 months and counting

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Now that “New Europe” was discovered among freshmen democracies of 
former Soviet satellites, with the Bush administration immitating their 
ancient regimes much too often, do those, who were granted asylum here 
from those countries, have to fear persecution in the ‘new U.S.’? 

That New York Times op-ed writer that looks like Saddam Hussein 
recently wrote that officials of the new U.S. travel fairly seldom. True, 
while Clinton is rumored going to run for UN Secretary General, Bush 
doesn’t even travel abroad. The new U.S. is more present militarily than 
diplomatically in the new world.

And the new world looks very different than the old one. But it doesn’t 
look better. Somewhere South of Mason-Dixon line, French Fries were 
renamed to Freedom Fries, and Sauerkraut to Liberty Cabbage, CNN 
reported. New U.S. is facing 3 veto votes in UN Security Council. New 
U.S. is causing split in the very own alliance - NATO. 

Greenspan told Bush in plain English that he can’t have the lunch and 
eat it. Million people were marching in Rome, mayors of most Italian large 
cities supported the anti-war message by displaying the rainbow flag on 
city councils, and Pope received Tarik Aziz, Berlusconi supported the 
war on Iraq, anyway.

If Berlusconi was a president of some communist country, the U.S. would 
be calling for referendum on him in his country. He obviously doesn’t 
have support of majority of Italians, and he would lose. Then, his 
successors would join NATO and rubber-stamp Bush’s wars. And why 
is it anyway that every U.S. president has to lead the country in war? 
Helloooo... 

A really cool president would solve the problem of health care in this 
country, so that my American doctors would not have to agree with me 
that it is worse here than in Cuba. He won’t be remembered just for yet 
another war. Unless he spectacularly loses it. Which this one might. But 
I am not sure he really wants to be remembered for that.

Maybe the US government is just scared from Iraqis because they’ve 
been hurting Iraqis for 12 years, so they believe Iraqis probably want 
them dead. That could be true, but Saddam is not Osama. Saddam is not 
a stateless enemy. He is a dictator, perfectly content with his position. 
He has a business of running his brutal regime, not fighting windmills.

As long as the U.S. does not threaten that, what is most precious to him, 
which is his power, he won’t bother to ‘lash an attack’ on the U.S., or 
anybody else, with whatever he doesn’t want to show to the inspectors. 
Not with inspectors in the country and with the threat of U.S. Navy in 
Persian Gulf.

But the actual war does not harm Saddam. It makes him stronger. It 
weakens his people, making them less able to resist. It worked in 1991, 
and it worked in Yugoslavia in 1999, when, after U.S. bombing, Milosevic 
just emerged stronger. It was the ‘soft’ manipulation inside the country 
that brought him down later. Arguably, bombing might not have been 
neither useful nor neccessary.

New U.S. administration is nevertheless short on details on how it wants 
to proceed with Iraq after the bombing campaign is over. And it has a 
habit of starting a new job before finishing the last one, so I wouldn’t bet 
on a developed strategy. But how the hell can an old guy who needs 
blood dialysis thrice a week hide from the billion dollars a day military 
force? Why are we still listening to his crazy tapes?

And it was the ‘Old Europe’ that for years looked up to the ‘Old U.S.’ for 
the concepts of freedom and democracy, soaked them up like a sponge. 
Now it seems that ‘Old Europe’ rocks, while the ‘New U.S.’ and ‘New 
Europe’ found themselves together - the later becoming democracies, the 
former slowly ceasing to be one. There are 21 more months until 
November 2004. That’s a long time. But it will pass.

Ivo

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