SAY GOODBYE TO THE ‘NEW AMERICAN CENTURY’ AND G’DAY TO THE ‘NEW ASIA-PACIFIC CENTURY’ – PART ONE

What the neoconservatives had hoped would have been a ‘New American Century’ is disappearing into historical oblivion as their dreams of a Central Asia and Middle East subservient to American and Israeli dictates flounders and collapses under the weight of blatant lies, arrogant hypocrisy and blind hatred. Instead of creating a new democratic Islamic world in the Middle East, they have only succeeded in demonstrating how utterly ruinous the result of their lies have been on the peoples of Iraq who have suffered possibly a million dead and millions more displaced from their homes in a nation that after five years of relentless abuse by the allies and their Iraqi puppets has been all but destroyed. And still no end in sight as the Americans, contrary to what they told the world, seek permanency in the oil-rich state they have destroyed.

But it’s not just the Iraqi nation that the neoconservatives have destroyed; America itself has also been forced to immeasurably suffer. It is the American people that have borne the cost of the neoconservatives dreams which for many Americans has turned out to be only a nightmare as they watched their sons and daughters go off to fight the neoconservatives wars from which some never returned alive and others who came back torn and mutilated only to die later or to live the rest of their lives dealing with their disabilities.

And the cost to the American people isn’t just measured in lives lost or smashed forever; every American has had to shoulder the financial burden of the neoconservative’s monumental folly as well. The US dollar has been severely weakened, petrol and other fuels have sky rocketed in cost and price, billions, no, trillions, of taxpayers dollars have been either wasted or simply stolen, military veterans go without care and shelter, America’s public health system is collapsing as is its public education system, and America’s standing in the world has been reduced to virtually nothing as the world increasingly recognises that it has been conned by the neocons and the Bush administration.

But from the beginning things have started to go sour for the neoconservatives and their dreams for a New American Century. The war against the Iraqi people didn’t go as the way they expected it to. US and allied troops weren’t welcomed with open arms by a grateful Iraqi people. There were no hordes of Iraqi people lining the road up to Baghdad throwing flowers at the feet of a glorious liberating army. There was no ‘cakewalk’ as the American people were told there would be. The lies were soon exposed. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction as the neoconservatives told the world there was. Saddam, it turned out, had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 as the neoconservatives claimed as their reason for attacking Iraq. And when the Iraqis insisted that they have the ‘democracy’ the US had promised them, they gave their votes to the religious parties that were not interested in the kind of ‘democracy’ that the US had to offer. Insurgents that didn’t want invaders in their country fought back and five years later are still fighting back.

And then the neoconservative political empire began to collapse. First to go was Bush’s biggest supporter, ex British Prime Minister Tony Blair who dragged his country into a war that the vast majority of the British people didn’t want. And while Bush’s other supporter, Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard managed to lie his way back in to power at elections he should have otherwise lost, he too was eventually given the flick by a people that realised they had also been taken for a ride by this lying ultra-nationalist. So annoyed were the Australian people that they had been lied to that not only did they tell Howard’s government where to get off but they also ensured that Howard himself no longer had a seat in the Australian parliament.

Finally, now, the window is closing on the neoconservative era as it becomes increasingly apparent that the next Presidential elections will see an end to neoconservative domination of American politics for years to come and with it will be the end of a world dominated by war and fear that was the hallmark of the neocons New American Century.

But while it is the end of the New American Century, it is not the end of the world. The man that has replaced the Australian war criminal John Howard has announced the dawn of the New Asia-Pacific Century. Kevin Rudd, Australia’s new Labor government Prime Minister, made the announcement in a speech to the Asia Society Australasia last week. The notion of a New Asia-Pacific Century was reinforced by Rudd during a recent visit to Japan where he visited Hiroshima and announced an initiative that is so startlingly refreshing from a Western world leader that it, together with the demise of the New American Century and the neocons that bought the scourge of war and death along with it, could see the beginning of a new movement around the world that demands a Century that is free entirely of all nuclear weapons and the threat of war.

Look out for Part Two coming soon.