Ahmadinejad in New York and Declining American Power

“This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahedin, bled Russia for ten years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat... So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.” – Osama Bin Laden 2004 “Speech to America”

If the quote above from Osama Bin laden, the World most wanted man since Adolf Hitler, is not lost on my reader, the implications of the current war of attrition between the United States and Islamic terrorists at different corners of the world would be obvious especially when put against the emerging global trend of brazen challenge to American supremacy as well as ballooning budget deficit incurred by a spend thrift government.

No doubt, the most appealing place to watch the ugly American drama is the annual talk shop organized by that impotent undemocratic institution called the United Nations. Here, with a broad array of murderers, killers, dictators, election riggers and monk slaughtering maniacs, the United Nation always relish in talking nonsense and doing nothing at least until recent times. It used to be that the high brow shops of New York were the only ones that felt the arrival of blood money on the streets of America, but not anymore.

Since the recent upsurge in anti-American sentiment around the world, the United Nation’s General Assembly is again becoming significant. While the UN is still lacking in either moral authority (which moral authority do an organization that harbors the murderers of Sudan and Burma have anyway?); or actual economic impact on poor nations (with its feudal affiliated institutions like World Bank and IMF still making big loans to kleptomaniacs unelected leaders like no tomorrow); it is beginning to at least dish some good comedy and drama to ordinary world citizens who are not privileged to partake in the perfidious annual celebration of criminals, gangsters and wimps in New York. Of course this comedy is in the form of crazy antics by the crazy personalities that dominate the world stage today: conservative fanatics and ideologues from the West, East, and South represented by US George Bush, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Iran’s Ahmadinejad, and Putin of Russia.

It was only last year that Chavez made the devil comment after his blood brother from Texas left the UN podium. This year, it was the leader of the Iranian branch of the Republican conservative party in the person of President Ahmadinejad that took the bull literarily by the horns. While one will wonder why these religious/ideological fanatics, who seem to have more in common, will decide to wash their dirty family linen in public- the comedy is not lost on us at all. The Iranian president being a guest of a dishonorable Columbia University used that once in a lifetime stage to pummel his ideological partner- George Bush. Let it be noted that drew richly from their commonality in his delivery by first dwelling for the most part in the first phase of his speech on the sanctity of creationism and perfidy of scientific theory of evolution.

Of course, if scoundrels and murderers do not find comfort in religion, they do find company in each other arms. After the President of Columbia University (the antagonistic host whose claim to freedom of speech was defeated by an apparent closed mindedness as evident in that hostile introduction) had delivered his “welcome”, and accused the Iranian president of jailing people with no trial, capital punishment, prosecution of homosexuals and denying the holocaust of course Ahmadinejad retort was most befitting. Drawing inspiration from these accusations, Ahmadinejad spoke of Guantanamo and Abu Ghareb (read- you are also guilty of imprisonment without trial and terror), willful love of gun totting Ex-Governor of Texas for capital punishment (guilty as charged), passionate hatred of the Republican party of gays and the denial of even the existence of such in their party (of course Ahmadinejad also denied their existence in Iran), and to round it all up America’s denial of the suffering of Palestinian masses (wow, what a befitting analogy to the holocaust!)

To any independent observer, Ahmadinejad made out well from this outing. Here he was pointing the fingers back at his accusers legitimately. But to any American viewer or lover of the greatest man made creation since toast bread called the USA it could be troubling. The danger of course is to both react hysterically and dismiss Ahmadinejad as another crazy Middle Eastern dictator; the prudent thing to do however will be to carefully examine the overall picture; which basically is a trend of declining American power in the world especially since the ascent of the current republican administration and its holy warriors!

In the past six to eight years America’s power in the world has decreased in two principal manners which are both separate and surprisingly interlinked. First is the decline of America power of persuasion. The first stage was of course set unfortunately by the bold face lie of both George Bush and his messenger to the United Nations- General Collin Powell. While I hate to include the name of the General dishonorably in this piece, his presentation at the UN claiming the presence of WMD in Iraq (that turned out to be false) will forever hunt him to his grave. Even more importantly, the series of lies and permutations glued together to deceive the world have forever damaged America’s greatest power of trust and persuasion in the world. Furthermore, the atrocities of torture, secret prisons in Europe and maintaining Guantanamo Bay (tactics the filthiest dictators of the world employ routinely) has further damaged the moral strength of a truly great country.

Directly and indirectly connected to this of course is an unsustainable war that is ongoing; the strife and hatred generated by it is even more dangerous. The current war in Iraq costs America unaffordable billions everyday. And if Osama’s strategy of bankruptcy by guerilla warfare is anything to go by, Bush appears to be the perfect co-conspirator with the terrorists from the Middle East. If you think I am making this up, hear Osama take on this issue: “And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and us are playing as one team toward the economic goals of the United States, even if the intentions differ.”

Well, why do you and I need to worry you might ask? We need to worry because of the alternatives out there. I shiver in trepidation when I consider a world with Russia and China with significant influence- far greater than America’s. You think the blood letting in Darfur and Burma is bad enough? China sees nothing wrong in these and would see nothing wrong in even far greater crimes! This will be a super power with no conscience: one ready to sacrifice all human dignity for the love of money and efficiency, at the expense of our collective human sensibilities. A world with Russia or China as a super power will be an extremely dangerous one because the ideology predominating in their respective governments is simply devoid of the flash of saintly or humane bent of America’s as best exemplified by the post war reconstruction of Europe and Japan by a brazenly powerful yet helpful United States.

America is a far more benevolent world power than China or Russia will be, and her declining influence and power should be of immediate concern to any peace loving citizen of the world be it in Nigeria, Russia, China or even Japan. We live in a dangerous world and it becoming even more dangerous everyday.