Bush playing god while rejoicing in ignorance and arrogance?
By the very fact of the enormous powers in his hands, any US president automatically commands great admiration and respect in the eyes of the world. In the equations of today's world, he is the mightiest man on the planet, controls the biggest (though not necessarily the strongest) economy, has the strongest military force and can make and break the world order with his influence and direct powers. Add to that immense power the additional strength of the leverage of European allies of the USA, and not even a fool will doubt that the rest of the world is indeed at the mercy of whoever is US president. The world looks up to him for leadership on virtually all international issues, the more so given the ideals of liberty, freedom and democracy so loudly associated with the founding fathers of the USA. Ideals that were at first only dreams and have taken two hundred years to reach the level attested to in the Clinton administration on many fronts.

Respect for the equality of all men and women (including that before the law) as well as the equality of nations among their groups, is central to those ideals. That specific respect is itself the real core of the idea behind the "western Allies" for which Churchill and many US and European politicians are highly admired. It was the pursuit of that ideal that helped bring an end to the Cold War, thanks to former Soviet leader Michail S.Gorbachev, former US President Bush and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thather who all made the disarmament and test-ban treaty a reality. Indeed, a strong sense of humility, a good dose of intelligence and sound ethics ought to be necessary requirements for anyone to fill the post of US president. But that is now no longer so. It is money politics that now counts; meaning heavy lobby finance by business. Back to top

George W. Bush - doubtful President, certainly ignorant of democracy in world leadership.Everyone knows how W.Bush wangled his way into the White House with all electoral tricks under the sun, leaning on his brother as governor to get the decisive Florida swing in his favour and thwarting Al Gore's too gentlemanly reliance on fair play. This cowboy gangster style of entry into office with the weakest electoral mandate in US presidential history, ordinarily makes Bush less qualified among world political leaders to pose as the idol of democracy elsewhere in the world. Indeed, since the Bush election scandal, there is hardly any nation still ready to accept US election monitors in their voting process as was almost standard practice. Asian and African nations are bewildered to hear Bush declare single-handedly without consultation with Palestinians, that he wants a different leader to replace Yasser Arafat who was democratically elected by the Palestian people. Bush wants to attack Iran and her democratically elected leadership for not supporting his heartlessly destruction of Afghanistan.Without respect for Pakistani democracy, Bush uses and fully backs that country's military coup-leader who toppled an elected president.

There is no place for thinking nor for planning in Bush's Texan style as president. With the drunkenness of the power of lobbyist dollars and the immensity of official power, he simply declares in boastful jargon whatever his cowboy impulse pushes out of his mouth at any one moment, throwing in a phrase about freedom or terrorism so as to sound idealist. He knows better than everyone else and whoever does not accept that, is an enemy and a terrorist or harbinger of terrorism. This, he hopes is his way to gain popularity, his only yearning in life.

Attention deficiency syndrome, not terrorism drives W. Bush. Back to top
Bush shows a strong craving for plenty of attention and will go to any cult to get it. He feels almost a maniac's need to prove to himself that although he is less intellectually capable, he can match his brothers in popularity and power.This is the urge that drove him into the presidential race. Money, oil-money and defence industry lobby in particular plus big business are the vehicles he rode into office. Like many politicians do, he yaps loud with slogans of ostensible ideals just to get public attention, while in reality pursuing something else. Gossip based decisions and hatred of any opposing views are as natural to him as he demonstrated in arm-twisting free media opinions in America in the wake of September 11 in 2001. This intolerance of other's opinions makes him a bad listener and rubs him of the professional advantage of available advisers. Lacking direction from the very beginning, he first embarked on a nation-wide tour of the USA like music stars often do, just to convince Americans he was going to cut taxes; as if that needed any convincing. Back to top

What he really wanted from that, was to gain popularity. Those behind the idea itself were the richest top of the society who had been most affected by the tax regime of Clinton's Democrat era. When his lobby-sponsors said that pursuit of a new missile shield for America could also yield popularity, he got sold on the idea, without regard for the new world order that was painstakingly achieved in ending the Cold War.Those behind this idea are the defence industry and energy sector lobbyists who stand to benefit tremendously from such a huge military exuberance. Then came the events of September 11 which suddenly swept the USA as a nation off its feet. At first, scared and gone into hiding, Bush soon saw the New York mayor Giuliani immersed in the public limelight and from that suddenly realized himself that the bombing of the World Trade centre had enormous value as a vehicle to reach high popularity. Arriving at the scene three whole days later, amidst public lamentations of the horror, Bush lapsed into self praise, saying "You know, I am a good guy". And to prove it, all he needed henceforth was to "declare the war on terrorism". A word that sends the media-loved wave of sensation right across the world at the speed of light. In one go, awareness of the facts about the shaky "nonsensical electoral vote count" with a mandate of less than 25% of the American people (for voter turnout was round 50% of which Bush got a nudge less than half), vanished for good. Back to top

To cope in his own way, Bush adopted arrogant cowboy style, gossip driven declarations that polarize the world into "they"-against-"us" mentality. He dares not attempt a sentence longer than ten simple words, because his memory lapses even on his much preferred incomplete, jargon-style phrases of six words or less. Many make no secret of their belief that he is perhaps the most ignorant American leader of all time.Yet, on practically any world issue, George W. Bush assumes that he knows more than the rest of the world put together. Ever deadly scared of anything that requires mental depth, this Bush seeks attention (i.e. popularity without contents) at all costs. In answer to all issues, his ideological baggage can only spit out the word "terrorist" with incessant repetition. At the world talks on Kyoto agreement, his contribution was "war on terrorism". On debt talks with poor nations, his reply was "terrorism". On world trade talks, his input was "terrorism". On the evidently complex dynamics of the Palestinian-Israeli issue, his focus is "terrorism". As the US economy deeps into several-year lows on various measures, and the stock markets plunge into a five year low, Bush's attention is on "terrorism". Only when some reporter prompts and primes him with specific focus questions does he rattle some watery phrases boastfully claiming to protect "freedom" or "democracy", or "our strong economy". No single world leader has ever undermined the genuine good intentions of the United Nations as much as Bush has done in the short time he has been president. All these prove that this US president Bush has a single-track mind with "terrorism" engraved on the track.

You really wonder how he can blunder his way on for so long with all those advisers he is supposed said to have. With his party dominant in congress, Bush has absolute power. And does absolute power not corrupt absolutely? On foreign policy, you wonder if this Colin Powell is the same guy Americans once thought was such a genius on strategy, he was asked to contest in the election for president himself and actually turned down the post of Vice-president. Lacking clear direction from Bush, this US secretary of state has recorded nothing but failures if not provoked direct anger on key issues with European allies, except in the initial sporadic effort that cajoled Britain and EC and, by extension, other countries into participation in "the war on terrorism". Back to top

On Terrorism Back to top
For Bush, terrorism seems to be identical with Talibans or otherwise with Al-Quaida or at secret moments of covet policy moves, terrorism is synonymous with Arabs and Moslems. No wonder this chaotic leadership literally wiped off America's two hundred years of achievements in the direction of liberty and democracy. Thomas Jefferson will turn in his grave if he hears what new laws Bush pushed through the senate to restrict the civil liberties of pointedly Middle-Eastern and Moslem Americans and immigrants and their assets and resources.

Even this issue of "terrorism" which stands so central to Bush's administration, is taken so narrowly that when the opportunity to tackle it at the level of the international criminal court came, Bush was the only world leader opposed to it. His arguments that label the court a political game and his claim of protection of American soldiers amount to pure libel and absolute nonsense. There is no argument for any favourite treatment of US soldiers that will not demonstration his pretence that Americans are more equal than other people, at least when it comes to international justice and fairplay. Bush rolls the world backwards to the times of George Orwell's satire "Animal Farm" in which the pigs chanted and taught chickens and horses to chant: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others". The bush case is worse in that it implicitly inhibits the effectiveness of a world effort to ban tyrants and despotic leaders from the world scene once and for all. The International Criminal Court, within the auspices of the United Nations, would make despots accountable to mankind through a proper system of law. Bush is the only world leader opposed to it and he knows better than everybody else. To raise Americans or anyone, least of all soldiers, above international law is the most stupid thing any serious political leader can think of. Back to top

Previous US presidents emphasized political dialogue with unfriendly nations. Nixon's tennis diplomacy opened up China. Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy yielded results in the Middle East and in Moscow it prepared the way that ultimately ended the cold war. This arrogant W. Bush leaves no room for dialogue; for he knows better than anyone else. All the bombing by the IRA in N. Ireland, the ETA in Spain and surges of internal US armed attacks the like of Oklahoma-bombing, are not terrorist enough for Bush's attention. And Moscow knows that Chechnya is not on Bush's notion of trouble, nor are the various other trouble spots around the world. As the arbitrary self-chosen police of the world and as today's god of "terrorism", Bush has declared the governments of Iraq, Iran and North Korea are all on his list of terrorists who must be wiped off the face of the earth. To devastate these countries, their people, infrastructure, their fragile way of life and their normal state right to civil self-determination as Bush has done in Afghanistan, is, in his eyes, the way to his saintly popularity in America. He is the self-appointed police of the world, creating and seeking only issues that serve his narrow interest to the detriment of world wealth and welfare. In the process, he creates streams of refugees for the United Nations to worry about. Ever heard him express concern about the refugees displaced by his bombing? When major countries gathered to put down donations to help redevelop Afghanistan after devastation by US bombing, the Bush administration kept seeking more resources for the destruction, and only to save its face did it make a symbolic - and only a symbolic - promise of an amount that is far from outstanding and with heavy strings attached. Back to top

Curiously enough, this Bush god of "war against terrorism" is against the very gun-and weapon control that common sense would dictate as useful in America's domestically grown terrorism. When the wave of anthrax attacks started recently, Dick Cheney quickly declared it another Al Quaida "terrorist " action, without the due serious security assessment that you would expect of the world's most advanced, most equipped and most formidable secret service which of course,is in the hands of this US administration. Many Arabs and Moslems were already harassed with arrests following Cheney's proclamation. Now that Anthrax attacks turn out to be from within the US non-Arab American community, how come the Bush administration does not use the same war rashness to fight it as it adopts in fighting Moslem Arab terrorists? How come legal process is not circumvented and families are not harassed just for being genetic relations of suspects? The funds of several organizations have been seized or frozen on the mere suspicion of any "possible" link to "terrorists".

The real untold truth is that this war has more to do with oil-money than with terrorism. The bombing of New York and Washington was a terrible and wrong thing. Whoever is behind it, whether it is Bin Laden or Al Quaida, is as such terribly wrong. But for heaven's sake, does that make the Taliban government (mind you an official elected government of Afghanistan as a country) equal to Bin Laden or his personal gang? Even if we do not like that government for religious extremism or other reasons? And after so many months - now a whole year - of demolishing that country and supplanting a US-favoured political group into political power, why must innocent civilian Afghans continue to bear the brunt of Bush's search for a bunch of terrorists? If the terrorists have moved into Pakistan for instance, is Bush going to also devastate Pakistan state? What is the logic? The real truth concerning the Taliban is not so much the terrorist attack nor even their horrible style of Islam, but more the fact that they control Afghanistan's huge petroleum resources while insisting on a policy that makes those resources inaccessible to Bush's American interests. It is just like the Gulf war which was fought not so much to free Kuwait on the basis of America's commitment to democracy in the region, but because Saddam Hussein was reaching out for sizeable oil reserves in the border areas between Iraq and Kuwait. Back to top

Unite Nations peace keeping operations world wide are among the greatest achievements in human history, given the scope of the membership of the world body as a platform that offers a good alternative to direct warfare between nations. Surely anyone who takes terrorism to the level of wars must strongly support this UN-ideal? Yes, anyone except Bush who knows better than all the 189 nations in the UN; the very Bush whose only slogan is "war against terrorism". Firmly and arrogantly, he threatened to pull out the US forces that his predecessor, Bill Clinton had pledged and provided for peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. Bush's problem is again the priority treatment he wants so as to exclude US soldiers from being subject to the very rules of international law that will limit atrocious terrorist behaviour by despotic leaders and by the military everywhere. The truth is more likely to be the fact that after all, American soldiers are not as fair and clean in their fighting as international practice requires. Bush's objection is an outright contradiction of the very mission he proclaims so loudly - "war against terrorism". On yet another front, Bush has unilaterally revoked the test-ban treaty signed by the USA with many nations, including Russia in the move that ended the Cold War. Again, Bush knows more than others and his specific personal need for attention among his defence lobbyists weighs more than peace in the world. In fact, this Bush is a god that can do no wrong.

On Palestian-Israeli issue: Back to top
The problem between Palestinians and Israel seems complex, has a long history and requires considerable skill to resolve. At the root of it are 1) an unjustifiable claim that God allocated land to a select group to the detriment of another, thus making God racist. 2) a terrible British blunder in the time of the Balfour declaration. 3) an uncompromising Israeli attitude in disregarding the basic rights of Palestinians as humans and as a nation, her indifference to world opinion and most of all her disregard for UN decisions that do not immediately favour her. 4) blatant partiality of the USA in always favouring Israel and repeatedly misusing US veto-powers to that purpose apart from the availability of American military technology and weapons to Israel. 5) Palestinian lack of adequate planning and strategic development apparatus for their own effective role in the region. On account of point 4, the USA, and especially the Bush administration is the most unqualified to act as mediator between Palestine and Israel. Because of her lopsided interests, the USA is an integral part of the Middle-East problem and not a possible source of solution to those problems. In fact, America is a complicating force in the problems and no reasonable solution is possible so long she remains entangled in those problems. Back to top

Most past US presidents made seemingly serious efforts to resolve the Palestinian issue as attested to by the number of Nobel Peace prize awards associated with the issue and by the one-time traditional occasions of the signing of agreements by the parties amidst the lime-light of world-broadcasted handshakes at the White House, and camp David. Each such occasion was always breaking news for which most other broadcasts around the world were usually interrupted. That was the tradition up to the end of the Clinton era, thereby making the world look forward to the US as the de facto mediator and judge over the Palestinian problem. Back to top

Events since the advent of Bush show why his administration is especially unqualified to handle the problem. Colin Powell failed blatantly on each of his missions to the area because he was not appropriately equipped with a viable strategy as to the process of mediation itself, and certainly as to the contents of the issues to be resolved. Add to that the shameful quality of leadership he receives from Bush, and it is a wonder that things are not more terrible than the deplorably current state of affairs. We have read stories of ancient fights between countries from pre-biblical time to modern times, we have seen movies of conquer and defeat, but never in human history have we seen the level of humiliation, utterly arbitrary destruction of communities, that the Palestinians, in this case even refugee settlements, have endured in the hands of official Israeli soldiers.

Terrorist bombing or attacks on any scale, whether with sticks and stones or with grenades or with fighter aircrafts and helicopter gunshots, is horribly wrong. And both sides are guilty one way or the other. It is noteworthy that Britain, especially under Tony Blair, has been very silent on the Palestinian problem, given the past involvement of Britain in the coming into being of the state of Israel which created this contemporary form of the problem. As far as we know, Blair almost always agrees to whatever standpoint Bush takes and however unfair on any issue. Blair does that perhaps to seem an agreeable second-most powerful man on earth, which he is not really; or perhaps out of a personal admission of his own inability to handle the Palestinian problem. Blair needs to show more initiative and more independence from Bush to prove he is more intelligent than the arrogant Texan cowboy and to prove that he is not as gullible towards Bush as now commonly thought. Back to top

The issue of suicide bombing is quite another matter in that one needs to understand the extreme desperation that drives, not just one or two, but large numbers of ordinary people on the street, and, since the Bush-Sharon era, even ladies into mass willingness to rather die in this futile way, just to inflict a token of harm on their perceived enemy. One does not need a psychologist to understand that. Bush's arrogance, and Sharon's power drunkenness based on Israeli military supremacy, boosted by his successful enrolment of Jewish American lobby to overwhelm Bush, only make matters worse. Failing US initiative leaves Europe as the next alternative source of hope for mediation. But the hope cannot be realized so long European leaders are afraid to upset Bush and so long Israel shows little regard for European opinion. Did Sharon not bomb the very infrastructure that Europeans helped to provide for Palestinians?

The only other source of hope then is the United Nations. That this world body is severely limited by undaunting Israeli disregard is obvious in the fact that Israel refused even emergency UN workers access to Palestinian sufferers of Israeli bombardment. Nevertheless, many UN initiatives have been made for which the Secretary General and his team deserve praise but their actions were frustrated by Bush administration's veto power. This is yet another dimension of the Bush administration standing in the way of peace and pretending to be a god that knows better but effectively does more harm than good. Even in the Palestinian issue, Bush is a free-rider enjoying benefits from military spending in the region rather than leading towards a solution. American weapon industry gains from the problem and will loose a booming market if the Palestinian-Israeli issue is resolved.

On Environmental Protection and Conservation: Back to top
As I write these lines now, CNN, BBC and other media channels are broadcasting the news of today's heavy floods in countries from Germany, Austria, Czechia, Hungary and Poland in Europe to India in Asia. Major European rivers including the Danube, Elbe, and the Rhine have risen three to eight meters above their banks to the highest levels in a century. In the USA, apart from great floods that hit several states at a time, fires now frequently spread over areas larger than some whole countries, with devastating effect. Storms, el-nino, el-nini and Sunyami waves have intensified their harshness on the planet. Ice mountains of the polar regions melt away; with icebergs, each miles long, breaking away to pose hazards to sea levels, sea traffic and continental shore lines. Huge fires in Australian, Spain, Portugal and other dry areas result from extreme drought as global warming takes its toll on land. Hail storm rained on subtemperate zones which previously knew no such phenomenon.

Against all these environmental disasters, mankind must unite in action to limit those emissions that destroy the protective ozone layer. It was for this purpose that at the initiative of the United Nations, the countries of the world met to develop and sign the Kyoto agreement. Unfortunately, the biggest polluter country on earth, the USA responsible for up to 40% of some pollutants and over 20% of many others, refused to sign the agreement; because its president is George W. Bush and, Bush knows better than the rest of the world put together. This is again a glaring case of the USA, which by its powers should have been leading the world, actually proving to be a stumbling block. Bush acts like a spoilt child in important policy matters. Back to top

It is true that there is no weapon on earth, that the USA does not already possess, and in greater magnitude than any other nation. To date, only the USA has deployed nuclear bombs on another country. The USA has more biological weapons, chemical weapons and nuclear weapons than any other whole continent. She has whole arsenals of weapon-carrying satellites that are deployable from space, quite apart from her huge inventory of conventional weapons and military forces. With Bush's incessant arrogant, impulsive attitude, his attention-seeking drive, his intolerance of the opinions of others, his readiness to circumvent the rule of law and twist whole legal systems just to satisfy his whims where justice should have been upheld, his tendency to limit press freedom on false claims of security - all add up to what constitutes potential danger to the rest of the world and eventually to the American people. The difference between him and Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin is mainly one of degree, not of type; the degree being dictated by the tensile American culture. Bush's attitude to non-Americans as shown by his handling of the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Iran show that he does not believe in the equality of nations when it comes to self-determination. With such a mind, if he had his way, he would be just as despotic as any other tyrant in history.

On the US Economy and Free Trade: Back to top
A look back at the time of Bill Clinton as US president in contrast to Bush, shows what a huge difference a year makes in American government effectiveness. Clinton was accessible to the press and the people, intelligent and open in his deliberations and a very hardworking president. In sharp contrast, Bush only dishes out bursts of short, ill-thought out declarations interjected with boasts of authoritarian commands to other nations as if they are his pets. Even of the simple country names like Iran and Iraq, he makes odd pronunciations as "high ran" and "high rack". For a mind that much confused, economic policy is entirely beyond comprehension. Clinton's historical achievement in achieving a record budget surplus has turned into a huge deficit in only a year of Bush's stay in the White house, as he increased the already huge defence spending by no less than a hefty 50% to the very highest military spending in all of human history.

The stock market has plunged downwards with Dow Industrials falling from nearly 12000 to below 8000 at 7942 to hit a 5-year low. The dollar sunk to parity with the Euro and various measures of the economy turn negative including rising unemployment, lower industrial earnings, returns on investments and now an outburst of huge corporate fraud by the very campaign contributors who catapulted Bush into office. Poor Alan Greenspan has nearly exhausted the means available to his FED, having lowered interest rate to 1.75%, the lowest in a life time as Bush's finance minister and economic departments offer no tangible policy of their own in responsive to the worsening US economy.

The much talked about tax cuts by Bush turn out to relief mainly the highest income brackets. And, it is exactly in this very group that unimaginably huge amounts of fraud have burst open into public view from the criminal accounting practices of top-earning executives of major companies like Enron (Bush's main campaign contributor), WorldCom, Haliburton (where Vice-president. Cheney was chairman before the elections), Xerox, and several other US companies of world status.

Ever ready to play to the tune of lobbyists, Bush suddenly spanked foreign steel producers with a high US import tariff of 30%, to the annoyance of European allies and to the detriment of free trade. All that comes out while high US farm subsidy was already a big hindrance to international free trade and a severe detriment to poor nations that are heavily dependent on agriculture. At discussions of debt-relief for the poorest countries of the world, the USA was not sufficiently co-operative, preferring to be a free-rider rather than be a helper. Time and time again, the Bush government has showed a tendency to twist the arms of the IMF to exert precisely such conditions on suffering emerging economies and on third world countries as will work more in US interest than the countries need. The hopes of recovery of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Venezuela, Colombia and similar countries now in or on the brink of bankruptcy due to monetary and trade imbalances, are endangered by such attitude as Bush maintains. Nationalistic protectionist economic attitudes have now taken so much root in Bush's America that even European companies like Unilever and Shell, plus Canada's Nortel which have long been in Standard & Poor's 500 index were recently thrown out of the index. That is no progress, but Bush knows better than the whole world.

Bush playing god, what type of god? Back to top
If Bush claims to know more than everyone else in so many areas that require world leadership, is he really so wise, intelligent and peace-loving as to act as a god, or what type of god is he? The automatic support he got from US allies for the war in Afghanistan came 1) out of unwillingness by Europe to seem ungrateful to the US that helped them in two world wars, 2) out of direct NATO treaty and the twisting of arms by Bush on the basis of "those who don't join us are against us and are terrorists", 3) out of the sheer suddenness of the request before individual European governments could get their involvement in a war torpedoed by their parliaments, 4) out of the expectation that by going along with Bush at the time, they were "buying him in" for collaboration on other fronts later, 5) out of their sheer ignorance of what mettle Bush is made of as a new leader, 6) simply because he is an American president with all the powers that carries with it on all fronts - trade, NATO, Security Council decisions and 7) simply out of emotional currents of sympathy upon seeing the devastating impact of the attack on New York with all the prolonged mass media exposure and the spontaneous creation of heroes on account of it.

By now however, many of these other world leaders have realized what impulsive, arrogant, self-centred politician Bush really is. They will no longer follow him as blindly as they did in Afghanistan. Even Blair, is hearing more and more queries on blindly yielding to Bush when British interests are ignored. The Bush phenomenon is not one of a god, but a pure demonstration of the errors inherent in a world system that has come to rely too much on America's dollar-driven lack of ethics when that country falls into an ignorant, yet arrogant leadership with biased notions of law and justice. He wants to play god, but is at best a self-appointed police and judge of all nations; a bad one at that. With all eyes on Bush as US president to lead the world, and his woeful failure, we must conclude that there is a big leadership vacuum in today's world affairs.

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