verging_on_random

Cementing the clash of civilisations

May 2, 2007 on 5:38 pm | In Uncategorized |

What is it about the USA? Or at least the white Anglo-Saxon patricians who get to run the place most of the time. They seem to have a pathological need to see external threats and enemies looming out of the mist. I guess when you’re part of an elite at the peak of the global pyramid and you know deep down you did bugger-all to deserve it, you just naturally tend to be a bit paranoid.

Presidential hopeful John McCain seems determined to institutionalise a clash of civilisations. Maybe he misses the Cold War so much he’s yearning to replicate it with a new set of villains.

MaCain wants to open up the global peace market to competition. The silly old UN shouldn’t have a monopoly so he favours a new ‘League of Democracies‘.

According to McCain, ‘regional alliances such as NATO are not enough to cope with the many global challenges facing the free world.’ I think this is code for ‘The goddam French keep disagreeing with us.’ His ‘ proposed “League of Democracies” would be an organization with economic, military and humanitarian components’ that ‘could act where the UN fails to act’. I have a sneaking feeling this would mean ‘act where the UN doesn’t do what the USA demands’.

Needless to say it would only be a matter of time before the members of the League of Democracies would refuse to fund both it and the UN … leaving us with two competing global organisations. In the red corner, the League of Democracies … and in the blue corner, the United Evil Undemocratic Islamo-fascists, Socialists and Their Fellow Travellers.

The idea’s absurd of course and won’t get to first base but it demonstrates the sentiment amongst the US ruling class. They just can’t see why the rest of the world won’t acknowledge their pre-eminence. Don’t believe me? Well here’s one wingnut blogger’s take on the issue:

Do you want to get out of the United Nations or at least see it reduced to total insignificance? Well, this is how you do it.

We create a league of democracies and then, over time, the US starts doing everything through the league instead of the UN. As that happens, the league will grow in status and importance and the UN will become less and less important. Then eventually we’ll get to the point where the UN will be totally irrelevant because everything that matters goes through the league of democracies. Once we get to that point, whether we pull out of the UN or not won’t make much difference. That’s why this is a great idea and one that every conservative should support, even if McCain is the one who happens to be proposing it.

I would have thought any organisation that was run to do the bidding of one member nation would be anything but democratic, but then that’s the alternative reality inhabited by the wingnuts. Democracy = any country that agrees with George W Bush. Well at least it will make it easy to decide who gets admitted.