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Excerpts from the World Press
"Explain to me, however, how someone who hid out from the Vietnam War -- let's call him George W. Bush -- succeeds in challenging one who was a hero during that war, by the name of John Kerry, on the subject of national service. Tell me how the same George Bush, or better yet Karl Rove -- his mentor, eminence grise, and Pygmalion -- makes the Iraqi disaster a determining electoral argument in favor of the author of that disaster."
"With his campaign promise to bring more allies into Iraq, Kerry is taking on a high risk, says Social-Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Gernot Erler. That Germany could follow a Democratic president into the war zone, the foreign policy expert rules out as self-evidently improbable. But also in the case of the re-election of Bush -- an outcome more frequently raised at this time -- German foreign policy specialists have no reason to breathe easier. The hostile U.S. government would remain intact, and the refusal to place troops in Iraq would become even more inflexible. And on top of a split over Iraq would loom anger over Iran."
"As opinion polls have shown in Europe and Latin America, the world in general fears Bush, and for that reason would prefer Kerry. It is hoped that the latter, even though he has little room to maneuver, would have more respect for international law and the U.S. tradition of multilateralism. Republicans insist that upon winning re-election Bush would moderate his international positions. In a second term, however, Bush would have few incentives to moderate his excesses in conducting himself on the world stage."
"It was one of the Americans' most desperate and damaging tactics [in Iraq]. Frustrated at their inability to get information from the men they captured, US troops arrested women and used them as bargaining chips. They told the men that if they talked, the women would be set free, but if they remained silent, no promises would be made about their fate. The Americans knew perfectly well that this was the worst threat they could make to any Muslim male traditionalist . . . . Few Iraqis believe US claims that all such women have been released."
"Inside Camp Delta, the British former Guantánamo prisoner Shafiq Rasul told me, 'There's only one rule that matters. You have to obey whatever US government personnel tell you to do.' The cost of disobedience was high: possibly a visit from the camp's 'Extreme Reaction Force (ERF),' a squad of guards in riot gear, which is said by several detainees to have carried out brutal assaults. When these allegations first surfaced, American spokesmen denied them. A leaked internal Guantánamo document, . . . headed 'Detainee Standards of Conduct,' suggests Rasul and the others were telling the truth."
Guantánamo: America's War on Human Rights
"It is thus a sort of speculative bubble founded on a very high valuation of military resources and the illusion of omnipotence that has incited the Bush administration, or at least the hawks in its ranks, to count on changing the status quo in the Middle-East. In so doing, they have minimized or ignored the other domains of political reality: nationalism, the complexity of the terrain, the anthropological dimension of foreign cultures, the prevalence of anti-Americanism in the Arab world, the necessity of a broad legitimacy, etc. Bush's America has tended to address the problems of the world with a hammer, forgetting that 'power' is not synonymous with 'military power.'"
"There is something even more disconcerting: in the interior of the premiere and most powerful democracy of the world, the United States, the political system is on the way to derailing. The terrorist horror has become the electoral capital of President Bush. So much so that the principle of security has gradually overshadowed the principle of liberty, and an obtuse social order is extinguishing such fundamental individual rights as the freedom to travel or freedom of the press, whose legitimacy has been placed in jeopardy. The true partisans of democracy--in politics, the media, the intelligentsia, etc.--dare not forget that they must refuse to give in to the temptation to put their values in parentheses when their existence is threatened."
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Armageddon Buffet is looking for speculative fiction, social satire, and cyberpunk; future fantasies, alternate histories, and apocalyptic visions; surrealism, naturalism, and literotica; well-researched and considered political, philosophical, and cultural commentary; true tales of successful activism, rebellion, and opposition; positive alternatives and survival strategies. More
Armageddon Buffet: Volume 1, Issue 3: October 18, 2004. Copyright © 2004-2007 by Armageddon Buffet. All Rights Reserved; reprint permission on request. .
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