Russia’s Gorbachev Says US is Sowing World Disorder

Mikhail Gorbachev has accused Bush of causing world disorder by attempting to build a new American empire, a plan which he says is destined to fail.

“The Americans then gave birth to the idea of a new empire, world leadership by a single power, and what followed?” Gorbachev asked reporters at a news conference in Moscow.

“What has followed are unilateral actions, what has followed are wars, what has followed is ignoring the U.N. Security Council, ignoring international law and ignoring the will of the people, even the American people.”

“When I look at today’s world I have a worrying feeling about the growth of world disorder,” he said.

“I don’t think the current president of the United States and his administration will be able to change the situation as it is developing now — it is very dangerous,” he said.

Gorbachev has hit the nail on the head. The people surrounding Bush, indeed the entire neo-con concept, is built on arrogance rather than intellect. Fat smucks like Dick Cheney and Richard Perle - aided by buffoons like Rumsfeld - thought they could build an American empire and even boasted about it on their infantile web sites promising to promote American values abroad and to act unilaterally:

The history of the 20th century should have taught us that it is important to shape circumstances before crises emerge, and to meet threats before they become dire. The history of this century should have taught us to embrace the cause of American leadership.

Now, with their country embroiled in an unwinnable war of choice in Iraq, most of them have scuttled under the bed claiming they would have "liberated" Iraq, but not in the way that the administration have done so. These supposed men of action and honour have succeeded in showing only that they don't have enough backbone to admit that they were flat wrong and they are now attempting to distance themselves from what they have done and push all the blame towards Bush:

"At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible," Perle told Vanity Fair magazine.

Of course this is Perle at his most disingenuous, after all there was a day when he delighted in the fact that Bush could be manipulated:

Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."

So it would be wrong to lay the entire blame for the debacle at Bush's door, though a fair chunk of it is deservedly on his doorstep. However, the entire neo-con reason for choosing Bush was that he was not very smart and, if Cheney chose himself as Vice President - which he duly did - then they would be able to manipulate Bush to carry out the insane plans they had always nurtured at the Project for a New American Century and other right wing nuthouses.

Now, six years into the plan, they have revealed only that their belief that they could bludgeon the world into an image to their liking is a deeply flawed one. And, as we now witness them scrambling around the Middle East attempting to bribe other countries into supporting their failed venture, it is becoming clear to one and all that these guys really don't know what they are doing.

Indeed, rather than build an empire, they will leave the US in eighteen months severely weaker than she was when they took office. Before Bush came to power there were many people who thought that the US could act wherever it chose militarily with impunity. After Bush has stumbled in Iraq of all bloody places - a country which had already been weakened to the point of collapse by twelve years of punitive sanctions - the gloss of American military supremacy has lost it's glitter.

Likewise, her greatest ally, Israel, has never looked weaker in the Middle East since losing a war with Hizbullah. And, again, Israel lost this war after Bush and Co. insisted that she go further and further into a war that appeared to have no purpose. It certainly had a war aim - the destruction of Hizbullah - that was appallingly far fetched. Quite how Israel would be able to destroy Hizbullah - who they had not managed to destroy during all the years that they had occupied that country - was a point which was never debated. Like so many neo-con policies, a wish is stated and they then all behave as if the very fact that they have stated their wish will bring it into existence.

Gorbachev again:

“It is a massive strategic mistake: no single centre can command the entire world, no one,” he said. “Current America has made so many mistakes.”

He said the U.S. administration was apparently unable to adapt to a swiftly changing world and had ignored — or was unable to see — the rise of Brazil, Russia, India and China as economic heavyweights.

Bush and Co. will never see the world in those terms; indeed, they dismiss such thoughts as Kissinger diplomacy, preferring to still believe that raw power and threats will eventually get them what they want. It is to this end that they cannot bring themselves to admit that their foray into Iraq has been an unqualified disaster, for to admit that would be to admit that their whole concept for government has been a failure.

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Tags: Mikhail Gorbachev, Bush, neo-cons, mistakes, American empire, Iraq war