A Close Shave

Whoa. Even if we as non-Americans don't have a vote in their elections, we keep an eye on what happens there, and rightly so. The Americans have an unrivalled capacity to send large military forces anywhere in the world, bomb the crap out of just about anywhere they would want to, and kill with impunity around the planet. If they got wind of my office here producing something more suspicious than mobile phone games, they could flatten it without any notice and explain it away without much trouble (much like the Al-Shifa Factory bombing). If they didn't like the way the plane I'm taking this winter was flying, they could shoot it down without much of a care (like the shooting down of the Iran Air flight by the USS Vincennes). If Osama bin Laden was hiding out in the forests of Karelia and the army couldn't find him (and let's face it, anyone could get lost in those forests) they could invade leading to the deaths of millions and it would be described as collateral damage. Worst of all, I'd have to go buy a new shaver so as to not leave so much as a hint of a beard. Not that I have much of one now, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Disastrous economic management has led to a global slowdown in a way far more disastrous than would be engendered by disastrous economic management in, say, Tajikistan or Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

They invade at will, carry out covert operations at will and aside from being responsible for the death of millions of civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan and many others, they have been responsible for and tried to be responsible for the deaths of heads of state and government - Saddam Hussein and Patrice Lumumba were successfully disposed of, Fidel Castro was not, nor was Moammar Qadhafi (although his daughter was). They have overthrown the popularly elected Mohamed Mossadeq, Salvador Allende, the Sandinista movement and many others, replacing them with the pro-American choice and plunging those respective countries into chaos and discontentment. The first force to unify and impose law and order in Mogadishu in 18 years was expelled with American backing just because this force was composed of moderate Islamists. Mogadishu is once again lawless, being pounded to rubble and run by warlords. The bombing of Belgrade in the late 1990s, with the latest precision technology, succeeding in killing 3 Chinese journalists in the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, 15 people on a passenger train which was actually shot at twice (and described by Wesley Clark as an "uncanny incident" - can you imagine this happening if roles were reversed ?), hundreds of people in Kosovar refugee convoys and, in another "unfortunate" incident, a passenger bus near Pristina. The ambulance coming to pick up the wounded was itself, naturally, also bombed. The list goes on.

This exploration is far from exhaustive and, quite probably, what is available and known is far from exhaustive. As a consequence, us non-Americans naturally have a right to have an interest in who is elected to the White House. We have a right to be extremely concerned when a McCain-Palin double act comes remotely close to accessing the power to do all of this. I've been looking back on things and wondering what was bugging me about Sarah Palin. It wasn't her Bushesque stupidity and mindblowing inability to construct a sentence, because while I found it very concerning that such a person should be in such a position of power I also find it quite amusing. I've come to think it's the complete transparency with which these people in the US get away with it. Let's not forget that Sarah Palin is already Governor of Alaska, she's not a nobody. She's got big ambitions, she's considering running for President again in 2012. I'll demonstrate what I mean with this by now famous video . I think the most striking thing here is the fact that there is complicity with all of us. She knows she's talking crap, Katie Couric knows she's talking crap, we know she's talking crap. However the whole circus just continues unabated. I've seen plenty of videos like this but no one in the American media ever seems to stand up to politicians and say hey, Buster, that's a bunch of crap. I've seen them blatantly lying on TV without being called to account for it, when it could so easily have been done. If there are any Americans who can explain why this is, please leave me a message ! George Bush, it seems, is a man who has perfected this "we all know I'm talking shit but let's just pretend it's true" approach to stuff. Palin is a remarkable student and McCain has shown he's no pushover in the subject either. I'm not sure what it is about the Republicans in general, but I feel that it has something to do with my piece on the word "evil" from earlier on. Democrats persuade Americans to vote for them based on the real issues - Republicans persuade Americans to vote for them in the same way that they'd persuade a small kid to give them their lollipops. I just don't believe a word they say, even if it's more likely to be true. Nicolas Sarkozy, for all his faults, will tell someone in the streets to fuck off if he fancies it. The proof is that he already has. We can trust a guy like that to some extent.

So the result was quite a rare event - US voters have actually selected the more intelligent, less confrontational candidate of the two. I'm not going to cheer just yet, but let's give the new guy a chance. He's already said that he's ready to talk to Iran, Syria and so forth. This is something that we just wouldn't imagine hearing from the monkey currently in charge. It might restore a bit of trust and goodwill in the world and we might be able to get back towards working together rather than hating each other. Besides, if I was American, I'd much rather have Michelle Obama as a First Lady than Cindy McCain...