From: Adam <""4thwormcastfromthemolehill\"{at}the field.near
the bridge">

Geo. wrote:
> We corrected that mistake, I'm sure we'll correct Bush's mistake at some
> point too. Doesn't make it any less of a mistake though does it?
>

Indeed not.

It will have a crippling effect on foreign perceptions of the US till at
least post-Bush & possibly much longer.

IMHO we can blame the fall of the Soviet Union.....

i.e. when the cold war was on we in the west knew it was (given the
impossibility of a hot war due to MAD) a 2 pronged struggle

A) Economic aka "It's the economy stupid" &

B) "Moral"/Societal aka "I want to live that way in that
sort of a society".

(A) was a straight up fight twixt capitalism & communism/state
ownership/control/planning.

(B) Capitalism doth not mean liberalism (see the PRC at the moment or
indeed Singapore).....what (B) was all about was the "we don't do
that" "We're not them" etc. wrt secret police, rule of law
vs disappearances at 3.00 AM etc (this applies to fascist/mil dictatorships
as well).

Well the GRU/KGB/NKVD is gone & mostly so have the Gulags (the upper
management of Yukos might disagree)....so what is there for us in the west
to say "that's not us"?

As such .......hello GT/Bagram/Abu Ghraib...hello "disappearances by a
state intel org".... hello state sponsored assassination etc.etc.

Were we still locked in a moral scrap with the SU...then I wager that GT,
rendition etc would not have occurred as frankly TASS etc would have
highlighted all this to the SU/WP citizens with a tag line saying "See
the West is just like us".

We were meant to raise all the poor souls who didn't live in a liberal
democracy to our level...instead....we're moving in the direction of their
govs.


Adam

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