Are you suggesting that "events" have an independent will of their own?

Or are you trying to make an argument for for Predestination? Wow. That's funny... I never would have pegged you for a Presbyterian!

Nonsense. Gasoline rationing in the US didn't start until July of 1942. Roosevelt Minor signed the Export Control Act two years earlier, in response to Japan's seizure of French Indochina. The "tail" wasn't wagging anything here... French Indochina didn't seize itself... Aviation fuel and machine tools didn't decide to stop shipping themselves to Japan...

My point here is that, with the occasional exception of large-scale natural disasters, "events" don't drive anything. People do. The Late Unpleasantness in the Pacific was started because Japan's leadership decided to expand beyond their traditional borders, and the West (especially Great Britain and the US) decided to oppose their efforts.

Which international relationships could you be talking about? The really important ones (the UK, most of Western Europe, Australia, Japan) remain in pretty good shape. Relations with Russia have improved markedly of late. Even China has quieted down, though I don't think anybody really expects that to last long.

Saudi Arabia's shaky, but that's due more to internal dissatisfaction with the House of Saud than anything explicit that we've done. We continue to piss off most of the rest of the Arab world by apologizing for everything that Israel does, but that's not unique to this administration.

Nothing unusual in the subcontinent... Pakistan and India continue screeching at each other while we (and most of the rest of the world) keep our fingers crossed and hope they don't do anything stupid with their new toys.

Subsaharan Africa continues to suck. Nothing new there.

So... which relationships were you talking about?

Of course, if we continue in your previous line of reasoning, any allegedly ruined relationships would have been "soured or destroyed" by "events". Bush is merely the dog being wagged by the tail. Right?

In an upcoming post, I will quote Highlights for Children, in which Goofus and Gallant learn the meaning of "multilateral cooperation" at a birthday party.

oh great now I have to figure out how to get coffee and muscus out of my keyboard

Ture, but there has been, and will contiure to be a degree of souring of relations across the pond, mostly due to differneces in ideology. EU stop mergers, Italy has started banning new petrol cars, france and other limit work hours, america is doing the exact opposite.

Bush may have done just enough to start souring relations with Europe. To quote Chris Patten, Conservative politician, former Governor of Hong Kong, currently the commisioner in charge of the European Union's International Relations - and certainly no pacifist leftie:

Describing the Bush administration's 'axis of evil' policy:

"absolutist and simplistic"

"Gulliver can't go it alone, and I don't think it's helpful if we regard ourselves as so Lilliputian that we can't speak up and say it"

'an axis of evil' - "I find it hard to believe that's a thought-through policy," he says, adding that the phrase was deeply "unhelpful"

US policy which so far consists of "more rhetoric than substance"


http://www.guardian.co.uk/bush/story...647554,00.html

The vast majority of European governments is already quite upset with the way the Bush administration is going. It'll be interesting to see what happens next; the aggressive unilateralism by Bush will either lead to global triumph or global alienation and eventual isolationism.

Only time will tell.

X.

Your comments assume a perspective of god - looking down upon all actors. Wrong perspective. View history in terms of each person who tried to alter history. It is from that perspective that others argue FDR got the war he wanted.

From FDR's perspective, war was inevitable regardless of what he did. Even moreso, he tried desperately to have it happen in a best way possible. In the days immediately after Pearl Harbor, FDR went into a deep depression among friends because he thought he had gotten the US into war in the worst possible way. He was deeply despondent which makes his 'Day of Infamy' Congressional speech all the more phenomenal. At the time, he blamed himself for the destruction of the entire Pacific fleet - thinking too much like the myopic admirals who still thought in terms of battleships. Little did FDR realize how events had place him in the most enviable of positions - because the tail wagged the dog.

There were millions of dogs all being wagged by tails (world war) whether they liked it or not.

BTW neither Boeing nor the Kennedy's viewed war as a good thing nor could they profit. Boeing is especially interesting. Years before WWII, Boeing was building bombers as fast as they could, taking out bank loans to build planes that had no customers. Interest on bank loans alone were killers. Why did they risk so much for years without customers? US in a world war was that obvious to Boeing management who risked the entire company on something they considered that inevitable - and something they could not affect, change, manipulate, etc. The Boeing tail was going to wag the dog. So the dog set itself up for the inevitable.

Kennedy's saw world war as an inevitable disaster they should prepare for. Their father was agast at the whole concept - so much so as to lose his ambassadorship. The father was also in disagreement with all his sons. No one saw war in a profitable manner. Some were simply more ready to let their tail wag them. The father kept trying to wag his tail, but was devestated when Joe was killed - his worst fear. The death of Joe was a wagging tail that the father just could not avoid no matter how hard he tried.

So many worked against US war involvement. What happened to them? Like Lindbergh, they all got pulled into a World War they worked so hard to avoid - the tail wagged the dog.

From the perspective of individuals, the tail inevitably wags the dog. From the perspective of god, this is not obvious. But the arguements posted previously assumed that FDR successfully wagged his own tail. It just did not happen that way not matter what it looked like from a god's perspective.

Others have demonstrated how badly Geroge Jr has soured international relations. I will add more examples. We had great relations with Russia until George Jr soured them. Because he has fixed some of his damage, you then conclude they are at their best? Myopia is looking at history only 3 months previous. Russian relations are only approaching what they used to be under Clinton because Geroge Jr so soured those relationships.

As for the Middle East, again a myopic viewpoint. The 'man on the street' opinion soured everywhere in the Middle east. Even Al Jezzera (the equivalent of CNN) which is encouraged under Clinton to be open and honest is finding itself threatened with censurship by the Geroge Jr administration. This attempt to censur is widely acknowledged throughout the Middle East. IOW George Jr has played directly into a bin Laden concept - that America wants to dominate the Middle East for its oil. Any yet one would myopically say all is OK because we are not in confrontation with Sudia Arabia? Do you listen to what the president of Egypt, the crown prince of Saudia Arabia or even Malaysia is saying? Last time US relations in the Middle East got this bad is when Reagan foolishly sent the New Jersey to shell arab positions in Lebanon.

Bottom line is that US international relationships with every major country has been severely strained by George Jr. - starting right off with his embarrassment of the Chancellor of Germany. Geroge Jr is strongly contributing to the destruction of the Oslo Accords and UN Resolution 242 which as also based upon the Fundamental Declaration of Human Rights. Human Rights? George, Jr in Middle East eyes violates that daily with his support and encouragment of one defined by the entire world as an enemy of Human Rights - Ariel Sharon. Sharon could only do so with George Jr's approval - as far as the entire Middle East is concerned.

Throughtout the world, too many are making valid claims that the US now acts unilaterally. Unilaterally? Yes, George Jr has so soured another world opinion of the US. That is also what Sec of State Powell has warned. Did you read the NY Times article cited elsewhere. This administration is actually considering unilateral action against Iraq! No responsible administration would give such actions serious consideration. But then this is a president without any international or domestic policital experience. So inexperienced as to almost destroy a Chinese relationship that China so desperaterately wanted to perserve.

Yes, White House actions during the spy plane incident were so irresponsible as to nearly destroy a relationship with another country that desperately did not want such political damage to happen. George Jr has so soured international relations that Tony Blair had to perform the international negotiations after 11 Sept. George Jr did not have the credibility.

Shocking! Imagine the effrontery! How dare the government of a Great Power act alone in what it perceives to be its own interests? (I'm not saying whether or not I believe that taking a poke at Iraq is a good idea... we'll save that for another thread.)

So... what's so bad about unilateral action? Sometimes, the alternatives are worse. The cripplingly multilateral European Union certainly did a splendid job of preventing the atrocities in Yugoslavia, didn't they? (Interesting to note that it's mainly American troops who are still on the job there.) What has the League of Arab States done to check the activities of militant extremists in their little corner of the world? How much success did ASEAN have preventing the recent festivities in East Timor or Burma? (oops... I meant Myanmar) The policy failures of that most impotent and multilateral of institutions, the United Nations, are too many and varied to mention here.

You're preaching to the choir here... my loathing for America's policy toward Israel is exceeded only by my loathing for Teletubbies. But, again I ask, what's different about George? The next president who has the spine to tell Israel (and the Zionist lobby in America) to go piss up a rope will be the first one.

NBC Olympic Host, Bob Costas, really did the Olympics proud when he announced at the opening ceremonies ... here comes the flag of Iran, one of the countries that President Bush said is part of an axis of evil.

Now that's the Olympic Spirit, Bob. I thought I was watching SNL with Dennis Miller doing the commentary!

How would the USA react if China were to pull some stunt like slamming American foreign policy as the Stars & Stripes is presented in Bejing in 2008?

Guardian is, while very left wing, a fantastic paper.

Don't give me that shit. The US internally argued for 10 days, while 1 MILLION Rwandans(no doubt wrongly spelt by me I know) died about whether to let its ALLIES use armored vehicles flown in purposely, and took an equally stupid about of time to respond to Kosovo - all because they were burnt previously in Somalia.

By losing any semblance of unilateralism the US is making their image worse, not only are they heavily throwing their weight around, and pouting hot air, now they openly admit they don't acre what the rest of the world thinks of their actions, great way to quash the growing clamour anti-American voices.

As for this Axis of evil bullshit, the thing that holds those three countries together is that they all have missile programs. What better way to justify a huge and useless missile defense system than tieing it to terrorism? Its the same with drugs and the Taliban, god what a crock of shit. Don't get me started on the whoring rubbish that means Suadi Arabia, one of the biggest suporters of terrorism, and most cashed up was missed out on in being in the axis of evil, bloody oil soaked administration
< /rant>

Interesting naffact: MSWord recognizing the word Taliban

George appears to be manipulated by Sharon. Ariel Sharon is one of the world's most willy political charlatans alive. He actually has George Jr blaming the Palestinians for having their own lands stolen. Neither James Baker nor the Clinton adminstration unilaterally blamed one side for all problems. Any yet that is exactly what George Jr has done. The victim has been blamed for his own plight.

The first step to Palestinian peace is the removal of Sharon. During a Clinton speech in Davo (NYC), Peres is said (in the NY Times) to have made a most interesting comment. Peace could have been obtained if they had just had enough time. Sharon single handly lead a country wide irritation intended only to entice another intafada - to destroy the peace process. That intafada in progress today still unfortunately only plays into Sharon's hand. That intafada eliminated any moderate Israeli political ground while empower right wing extremists Jews - also known in a UN conference as some of the world's worst violators of human rights. (Sharon does care since he has already massacred thousands of women and children without any outside objection).

And so lies the problem. The victims of human rights violations are blamed by Bush for those violations. Go figure. No president, except George Jr, ever did that before.

No president should have to tell Israel, et al to go piss up a rope. Simply making Jews equal to Palestinians would put those anti-humanity extremists in their place. But George Jr does not do that. Clinton did. James Baker did. George, Jr only understands what Sharon has been telling him rather than see the whole story. Clinton's NYC speech is said to have addressed those issues without naming names.

BTW this subtitle from an The Economist article I will read soon: "George Bush's hit-list could have been written by Ariel Sharon". Clearly no accident.

The only question remaining: Is Geroge Jr so unintelligent that he has become a puppet of Sharon, or were George Jr and Sharon really both educated in the same right wing, extremist sandbox.

So how entwined are George Jr with Ariel 'mass murder' Sharon? This last paragraph from The Economist article 9 Feb 2002 entitled "George Bush's hit-list could have been written by Ariel Sharon":
The only part missing was the "wink-wink".

Sounds more like two mafiosos conspiring. That is the difference between how George Jr and all other Presidents have handled the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Bush conspires, probably out of ignorance, with the most evil player to ever take the field.

The evil axis is not more evil than Ariel 'mass murder' Sharon.