An addendum to Rafe’s comment about the protests over the weekend, which I mostly agree with. I think perhaps the public is finally seeing overtly what American Government and Policy has always done covertly since the Cold War. Through the CIA and other organizations, the funding and arming of opposition and guerilla groups in various countries, the sabotage of democratic elections through assasination and other subversive means even when it meant propping up dictators (see Chile, Allendez and Pinochet), and overall manipulation of other countries through hidden avenues has always been our style when it was deemed strategic enough and in our interest to get involved. If you don’t believe this happens anymore, you haven’t been following the story on Hugo Chavez and Venezula lately.
So the underlying current of events, changing regimes in the name of self interest and national security, is really old hat. What is new is that we are now blatantly out in the open about it. The European continent has seen war upon war and dealt with the threat of terrorism and separatists for centuries. It happens once to us, and suddenly we have divine right to do what we want to the rest of the world because no one does that to the US of A.
Harbor no more illusions. This is who we are. The Bush Administration will eventally go, another will take its place, and we will still make the same rationalizations and the same policy decisions, sometimes in secret, other times in a very public manner. We are the strongest nation on the planet but the deal we made to get here demands an obscene cost. It is wrong and it is right. But everyone who is complicit must know there is a price to all of this and that price is hate. We are a beacon of light in the world, that casts a very long shadow.
