Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2003 05:52:37 +0800
Subject: Re: its a new world order stupid
From: Malcolm Riddoch <m.riddoch-AT-ecu.edu.au>



On Friday, April 18, 2003, at 03:45  AM, Anthony Crifasi wrote:

> On Sunday, March 23, 2003 Malcolm Riddoch wrote:
> "while your belief that men of righteous honour and good christian 
> ideals have control of the destiny of the US and therefore of this 
> world is rather quaint..."

This is not an anti-christian statement. I just find it quaint that you 
are credulous enough to actually believe that Bush's born again 
religious zeal is anything other than a pragmatic political appeal to 
the conservative christian lobby groups that helped bring him to power.

>> The simple historical fact of the matter is that it is Bush who has 
>> declared a new world order. It's also a simple historical fact that 
>> during his term Clinton did not make such a drastic move to 
>> permanently sideline the UN process.
>
> In other words, Clinton did not force a vote in the UN Security 
> Council before he bombed Bhagdad. That does not change the unilateral 
> and unathorized nature of what he did with his superpower status.

Neither did his bombing of Baghdad result in the collapse of US public 
and political support for the UN and an international crisis that has 
mobilised 'old europe' along with more traditional opposition against a 
'go it alone' US global enforcer. Clinton did not polarize the world 
politic, he worked more or less within an internationalist framework 
and did not fatally undermine the legitimacy of the UN by entirely 
rejecting its authority. Please note that this is not a vote of support 
for your Democrat party, just a statement of fact. Who knows how 
Clinton or Gore would have reacted to 9/11? It's a pointless exercise 
wondering about it cos it didn't happen.

So which bit of - "the US administration is under no compulsion 
whatsoever to defer to the UN at all in any field, quite the opposite, 
it is now explicitly its own arbiter in global politics and an era of 
international cooperation, with all its limitations, is at an end" - 
don't you understand? If we can dispense with your ridiculous 
'anti-christian'/will to power/Democrat conspiracy theory, we're left 
with the fact that you simply don't think that what has happened is a 
radical historical break with the previous world order based around the 
UN. I think Bush would disagree with you, I think he would like to be 
remembered in history for his 'Bush Doctrine' and for carrying through 
on his father's premature promise of a new world order and its 'Pax 
Americana'.

mr



     --- from list heidegger-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---