Bush abdicates America’s global leadership role
From the International Herald Tribune. Strong words, from a world class newspaper, and indicative of how Europe views the neanderthals of the Bush Administration. The US is losing support and credibility worldwide. Strong allies? Even Britain is twitchy about what the overgrown boys in DC, long on macho talk, short on results, are trying to do.
Hmmm, if Nader did get Bush elected, then long-term, this may have been the best possible outcome, as the extreme Right in the US, having finally seized power, is blowing it big time. Pendulums do swing back, y’know. And this particular pendulum is swinging leftwards now.
At present, there is much talk about the unparalleled strength of the United States on the world stage. Yet at this very moment the most powerful country in the world stands to forfeit much political capital, moral authority and international goodwill by dragging its feet on the next great global issue: the environment.
Before long, the Bush administration’s apparent unwillingness to take a leadership role – or, at the very least, to stop acting as a brake – in fighting global environmental degradation will threaten the very basis of the American supremacy that many now seem to assume will last forever.
American authority is already in some danger as a result of America’s relative absence from the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg – “relative,” that is, to its share of both the world economy and global pollution. The absence of President George W. Bush from Johannesburg symbolizes this decline in authority.
But when a country that emits 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases acts as an uninterested, sometimes hostile bystander in the environmental debate, it looks like unbearable arrogance to many people abroad.
It is high time for the United States, metaphorically speaking, to get out of its oversized, gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle and join the rest of the world in doing more to combat global warming and protecting the planet.