Time to rethink the position Editorial
Guyana Chronicle
March 10, 2007

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"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay."

Percy Bysshe Shelley
Ozymandias
ONE has a feeling that George W. Bush must be closely identifying with the titular king in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem.

Roughly two years after reaching what must have been the zenith of his political career, the U.S. Head of State’s current isolation seems as tragic and ironical as the fall of that great mythical king.

“Today in the Middle East," the beleaguered Bush said in a recent speech on Iraq, "freedom is once again contending with an ideology that seeks to sow anger and hatred and despair. And like fascism and communism before, the hateful ideologies that use terror will be defeated by the unstoppable power of freedom, and as democracy spreads in the Middle East, these countries will become allies in the cause of peace."

In equating terrorism to communism and fascism, Bush does what his critics have long accused him of doing: creating another bogeyman for the American people to fear. The bogeyman of terrorism – as a threat against America's security – takes the focus off the failures of Bush's domestic agenda and concentrates on a crudely defined enemy.

What the American President's association of terrorism with the previous two "isms" also does is simplify what the United States is up against, not just as a method of public propaganda, but because any further complexity of definition seems to be escaping the ears of the Administration.

Fascism and Communism are the results of intellectual experimentation and, to some degree, discovery by Western thinkers. As intellectual constructs, they stir the brain but the heart of the majority is rarely taken over.

Terrorism, a Middle Eastern phenomenon, has deep religious underpinnings, from its original manifestations in the Zionist movement after World War II to its present mantle of Islamic fanaticism.

This week, the American President is touring Central and South America in a bid to win fast eroding respect in America’s back yard.

This is region where the left (the modern euphemism for communists) has held an increasing sway in recent years, particularly as America was focusing its attention on the debacle in the Middle East. It is a telling irony indeed that in the region Bush claims to have doubled aid to, since he was first elected, he has to have a security detail large enough to close entire roadways in Brazil.

President Bharrat Jagdeo’s scathing criticism of U.S. policy in the region Thursday has been a long time coming. U.S. pronouncements have wide-reaching and often negative effects on a country from its investment attractiveness to its tourism potential.

It is time the American leadership rethink its position vis a vis its role in the world.

The fact that the effects of the projected Pax Americana keeps turning out as the casus belli from groups varying from small terrorist factions to entire nations means that something is seriously not working.