The sanctity of (American) life

Today, back in Sydney, I went first to the pool then to the movies in an effort to escape the 39°C (102°F) heat (my house isn't air-conditioned). As the final credits began to roll at the end of The Quiet American, the woman sitting next to me turned and said: "This film should be compulsory viewing for everyone in the country, particularly that person in Canberra." Had I seen her in the lobby of the multiplex before the movie, I would have assumed from her clothing, her hairstyle, and her demeanor that she had voted for "that person in Canberra" (Prime Minister John Howard) in the last three elections and for his party throughout her entire life. Yet though she may have been a wealthy, elderly, conservative woman she saw as clearly as any starry-eyed young radical the parallels between Grahame Greene's tale of the beginnings of US involvement in Vietnam fifty years ago and the events about to unfold in Iraq—American arrogance and hubris being a constant in post-WWII history.

So this is what it's come to: strangers in lifts and movie theaters express to me uninvited their disapproval of the coming war with Iraq. Not out of some bitter or envious anti-Americanism, as the defenders of American imperialism like to suggest, but because—like most Australians—these strangers disapprove of the new world order Geoff Kitney describes, "in which America chooses which regimes stay and which should go."
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Divine bullying
State of the Union fails to mention oil -- but displays two other major reasons for Bush's unprovoked war
by Geov Parrish

But the demonstration effect goes far beyond Iraq. The intended audience in 1945 was as much Stalin as Hirohito; the audience for the Bush invasion of Iraq, in this age of global satellite TV, is the entire world. Iraqis, dead or alive, are secondary. The entire world, and American dominance of it, is very much the agenda for invading Iraq; Bush's State of the Union address delivered that message emphatically. The U.S. will not wait, for the United Nations or even its allies, before striking. We need not seek their approval or cooperation. It is the United States' judgment that Saddam Hussein, owing to various crimes against humanity and the oil industry, must go. It is also the United States' right to make that judgment, regardless of whether anybody else agrees, and it is also the United States' right to implement it, again, regardless of what others say, think, or do.

This is a formulation that goes far beyond the role of "global policeman"; this is America as cop, judge, jury, and executioner. It is not intended to serve the cause of human rights, or disarmament, or even the security of American citizens. It is a tool of empire, and George Bush and his administration are remarkably naked in their assertion that not only does America intend to rule the world, but it should rule the world, and the world will be better off for it. And if the world is not grateful, it just doesn't understand. Yet.
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