Perspectives
The fall
MIKHAIL Gorbachev's rise and role in the former Soviet Union had always been suspect. The mystery surrounding the introduction of his so-called glasnost and perestroika ultimately resulting in the dissolution of his country still lingers. If he, in a way, catalysed the fall of the USSR, he was in the same vein responsible for the worst ever thing happening to the US -- becoming the world's unrivalled superpower.
It's sudden giddy rise to an unquestioned top dog status after the liquidation of the Soviet Union was, in retrospect, only an invitation far the country's intoxicated elites to run their great country in a way that it is at the brink of self-inflicted ruin today.
American leaders, who had to previously reckon with a formidable ideological foe and to be mindful of the democratic welfare of the ordinary people at home, rapidly grew arrogant, ambitious, and detached from reality. As a result, instead of keeping a steady course, they hatched dubious plots to put their super rich country permanently in global driver's seat. As so feverishly proposed in the "Project for a new American century" even before George Bush sneaked into office, the neo-con elite limed to go straight for the world's oil jugular in the Middle East.
Obviously, taking control of oil had been the driving motive of the project. The 9/11 attacks only provided the all purpose security ability, these neo-con ideologues needed to inflict even more grisly tragedies around the world to accomplish their goal of cornering the world's energy market. It's not just foreigners sitting on oil who these elites disdain.
America, once envied for its egalitarian ethos and fairness, has been relentlessly pushed backward towards the social condition of a third world plutocracy. One surely romanticised America if one believed that its rulers observed all their professed values, but those values mattered as a check on excess when the breaches were plainly exposed.
Not anymore. Now everything -- torture, invading weak countries, wire tapping, the lobbyists buying the government and even treating a dim-witted president as if he were "Der Fuhrer" -- are all okay. A carte blanche for the rich who detest democracy as a matter of principle is also okay. The top one percent Americans siphon off 21 per cent of all wealth now, while the lower half of the American wage earners get by on 13 per cent. The top one tenth of one per cent of Americans -- 300,000 -- last year-made more money than the bottom 150 million Americans. This revealing information comes in David Cay Johnson's new book "Free Lunch."
Of course, this lucky lot adores Bush as do some religious fundamentalists of lesser means. Still, according to Zogby polls, only 24% back George Bush. But President Bush and his wrecking crew behave as if they were unanimously acclaimed. The cost of this appalling attitude is nearly 30,000 troops' casualty, deteriorating public services, official lawlessness, rising prices, stagnant wages, and insecurity for the average earners.
Yet Bush, the patrician with a "just folks" accent vetoes a bill to provide health care for poor American children while the military sucks down more than half a trillion dollars a year. The Iraq was squanders nearly three quarters of a billion dollars everyday. These are all at the cost of ordinary Americans' well being. Even with this dismal record of the administration, the Americans are urged to cheer by a media so pliant that it would make even an old Pravda hack blush.
Is Iran still on the cards? If Bush and Cheney can get away with it now that would fit their perfect pattern of making life much worse for everyone but themselves and their cronies. Meantime, the dispirited dissidents in America are now reduced to the pathetic posture of praying only that the wary military chiefs would block an attack on the Iranians. The Pentagon reportedly already squelched an earlier plan to bomb Iran.
When the successful revolutions are attacked they are forced to swing defensively to the right and because the authoritarianism so easily becomes a habit -- the revolution soon expires. Iran in early 50s was slowly democratising under Mosadegh -- until he nationalised oil. The CIA removed him for his policy of looking after the Iranians first.
In the 70s Ayatollah Khomeini arose as the glowering symbol of the anti-Shah movement, which also consisted of the leftists and liberals. But they were very first casualties as the right wing Islamic regime came into being under external duress. But the constant western the rails against Iran only produced far more staunch anti-west leader like Ahmadinejad -- an exact counterpart of Bush. Any further attempt to provoke him will hoist the US on its own petard.
With oil and oil only floating in their imagination, Bush and Cheney long ago proved conclusively they are not fighting in the least for democracy, either at home or abroad. Putin, Gorbachev's successor in new Russia, the successor state of the USSR is also in a fighting mood to protect his oil interests.
However, democracy never being a creed either in USSR or Russia, Putin is spared of this burden. While Putin's Russia keeps rising to achieve its mundane goal, the unrivalled superpower's precipitation from its lofty heights of idealism continues with its war mongering for oil.
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