Bush's speech: a message full of threats to the peoples

27/11/2003
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The United States' President George Bush has chosen England as the stage to make a new speech that defines the strategic guidelines of his country's imperialism in the present international situation. He even dared to defend war and justify the fooleries and crimes he has committed, despite the fact that the British people consider his visit unwelcome and that combative mass demonstrations are taking place against his presence in the country while his host Tony Blair faces heavy domestic opposition. Even before the beginning of the war in Iraq, the British capital stood out as the stage of the largest popular demonstrations and concentrations in the memorable dates of February 15 and March 15 of the current year. Therefore, if the choice of England as the place to speak to the world about the new imperialist policy is full of symbolism, so is the people's manifestation of revolt against the tyrant. The fact that Bush began his speech mentioning United States' former president Woodrow Wilson was meaningful, as he is viewed as a man who was not able to achieve world domination for his people after World War I (1914-1918), but who undoubtedly stands out due to the fundamentalist and messianic point of view with which he foresaw the country's destiny and mission. He said, "The United States has a spiritual energy that no other nation possesses to contribute to the freedom of humankind". We must bear in mid that Bush repeatedly invoked "divine predestination" when referring to the mission of the empire he leads. In his speech made yesterday at the Buckingham Palace, the US President made a reference to Woodrow Wilson's pledge made there in 1918 during the reception offered by British King George V. In that occasion he said that "right and justice would become the predominant and controlling force in the world". So the chief of US imperialism is trying to provide ideological grounds to justify his own way to conceive and put into practice the reconfiguration of world order. Another fact about Woodrow Wilson that is also worth remembering is that he was elected in 1916 with the motto "Peace without victory", promising to keep the United States away from the world conflict. Once inaugurated, Wilson developed a fantastic propaganda structure to support the chauvinist hysteria aimed at convincing the population of the need to attack the Germans. "Multilateralism" under US hegemony After mixing facts in order to identify the existence of a single purpose connecting the attacks on September 11 in 2001 and different actions that occurred in the last two years in Bali, Jakarta, Casablanca, Bombay, Mombasa, Najaf, Jerusalem, Baghdad and Istanbul, with the clear objective of creating an alarmist sensation and showing that terrorism threatens everything and everyone indistinctly, Bush pointed out what he sees as the "three pillars upon which peace and the security of free nations rest." The first one is the role of international organizations, which "must be equal to the challenges facing our world". After slandering the multilateral system and belittling the United Nations, now the superpower tries to prioritize his interests transforming unilateralism into the main norm of its foreign policy and militarism into the basic tool of its international action, proclaiming that everything will be done in order to prevent the UN from "solemnly choosing its own irrelevance and inviting the fate of the League of Nations". A few months ago, just before attacking Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared before the Security Council when its denial in authorizing the war that the UN has just shown its "irrelevance". Now the US imperialism, by means of Bush's speech, adopts the term "multilateralism" and presents the need to offer a "global response to the terrorist threat", what could only mean the willingness to submit the UN to his rule and renovate the effort that began just after the attacks on September 11 to create a front of governments under his lead by means of threats: "either with us or against us"—such was the sentence pronounced on September 20, 2001. In that sense, the attempt to muzzle Europe and reaffirm the role of NATO, "the most effective multilateral institution in history" is noteworthy. As he saluted the evolution of the European Union, he signaled that he would not admit another military alignment that is different from the Atlantic Alliance. Violence—the main method of US policy When he presented the "second pillar of peace of security in our world", Bush once again passed a clear message on the violent nature of his policy. "The second pillar of peace and security in our world is the willingness of free nations, when last resort arrives, to retain aggression and evil by force (…) The people have given us duty to defend them. And that duty sometimes requires the violent restraint of violent men. In some cases, the measured use of force is all that protects us from a chaotic world ruled by force". Such considerations on the use of force in international relations in order to justify militarism and war mongering are accompanied by threats to North Korea and Iran along with a peremptory declaration that the military occupation in Iraq will be maintained, what proves the fallacy and farce of announcing that the power would be given back to Iraqi sovereignty within six months. Expansion of "democracy" in the name of prioritizing the United Sates The president finished his speech with a dissertation on the "third pillar" of security: "the commitment to the global expansion of democracy". At this point imperialism displays a clear determination to make effective its "manifest fate" and, to all effects, the pretext to new interventionist actions is already patented, what could mean wars against countries and peoples. Just before the United States enter an electoral year, Bush's speech in Buckingham has the merit of making clear his intentions, which mean fulfilling his strategy of world domination either by means of a forced "multilateralism" under the rule of the United States or by means of war. The world is not indifferent to the choice that the American people will make, despite the limitations of the political system within which the choice will be made. To the peoples, Bush's message is full of threats, what demands attention and preparation to a struggle that will necessarily be multifarious and long, a struggle to prevent the world from entering an era of chaos and barbarism. * José Reinaldo Carvalho. Journalist. Vice-president of the Communist Party of Brazil – PCdoB, responsible for International Relations.
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