NEOCONSERVATIVES AND THEIR GRAND DELUSIONS

The neoconservative’s ability to delude themselves knows no bounds. Thomas Donnelly writing in the neoconservative’s comic The Weekly Standard says in his latest article:

With the congressional “supercommittee” – or, to be precise, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – now complete, the stage is set for a very high drama indeed. Now comes the moment when Americans must confront the costs of remaining the world’s sole superpower, the guarantor of an international system that has created a generation of great-power peace, widespread prosperity, and unprecedented human liberty.

The ‘world’s sole superpower’? ‘Guarantor of an international system that has created a generation of great-power peace’? ‘Widespread prosperity’? ‘Unprecedented human liberty’?

Who’s Donnelly trying to convince?

Ever since the downfall of the Soviet Union the US has fancied itself as the ‘world’s sole superpower’ but in reality of course, it is nothing of the sort. It forgets that China is also a ‘superpower’ with the ability to destroy the US, and it forgets that Russia, if push ever came to shove, could also still destroy the US. If it took five hundred nuclear warheads to destroy the planet, having a thousand of them when your two main potential enemies has only six hundred each doesn’t make you a superpower. The US, China and Russia all have Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) capability. How does that make the US the ‘sole superpower’? Perhaps the neocons think that the US propensity to throw their weight around gives them rights to such title but, again, reality shows us differently. In October 2001 the full technological might of the ‘world’s sole superpower’ was thrown against a rag-tag army of poorly armed Islamists and insurgents. Ten years later and the ‘world’s sole superpower’ still hasn’t anywhere near defeated the rag-tag army of Islamists and insurgents – and, after ten years of fighting, it’s unlikely that they ever will.

In March 2003 the ‘world’s sole superpower’ unleashed that same technological might against the people of Iraq. Just over nine years and four months later, on 15 August 2011, a series of bomb explosions across Iraq killed some 60 people and injured another 100.

So much for having ‘created a generation of great-power peace’.

And ‘widespread prosperity’!? The country is on the verge of bankruptcy. The American people are at breaking point with almost an entire middle and working class facing ruin. The only people who have prospered are the bankers and the Military Industrial Complex.

And, as for ‘unprecedented human liberty’; all this ‘liberty’ has ever given the American people is the freedom to hate each other and to exploit and manipulate each other. The wealthy have been free to enslave and fleece the gullible. The power hungry have been free to lie and trick the people in to sacrificing their lives for the cause of a nation that’s not theirs. While they talk of ‘human liberty’ they have imprisoned and tortured thousands who have had no trial or justice.

So much for ‘unprecedented human liberty’.

It is the grand delusions of the neoconservatives that will keep America from ever becoming a real superpower. Arrogance and military might do not a superpower make.