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Hi Marlon: Are you suggesting that if Bush had handled the war/invasion of Iraq (pick your term) in an "un-shabby" or more "competent" manner, then you would have not have had a problem with his Presidency and his politics?
Half-seriously, it's perhaps time for the rest of the globe to have a say in the US elections, since the result has such far-reaching consequences for all of us. Are you only looking at the impact on the US tax-payer?
You seem to suggest you would have been happier had the "allies" paid a larger chunk of the war bill. But is this really the issue? Even if seen only from a US perspective?
Do you see Republicanism as something different from Democrat politics, or are these just two sides of the same coin? Would one necessarily have different consequences for the planet?
In your concluding para (part of the text deleted for brevity), you seem to suggest that India is a monolith, and that everyone views the US rather uniformly from here. That this is untrue is clear from the fact that the BJP was a pretty good ally of Bush, and vice versa. They seemed to understand each other's conservatism. Since May 13, 2004, the equation has changed, in part because people and parties like Bush and the BJP tend to create a broad-based coalition of interests against what *they* stand for. And I'm not talking about the politics of religion here. Had it not been for the BJP in India, it would have been unthinkable of the Congress and the Communists in the same boat, a situation the polarisation now has resulted in.
"Anti-Americanism" is a catchword that is insufficient to explain things. I guess anyone sitting in the US, and getting the local media's view of the world, would not appreciate the many issued involved. One doesn't need to read Asterix comics to realise that the Romans weren't quite popular in their days of Empire ;-) FN
On Wed, 27 Oct 2004, Marlon Menezes wrote:
The issue is not necessarily the war itself, but rather the shabby way it has been conducted by this administration. The incompetance is stunning and US tax payers like me are now paying for this stupidity.
Unlike his father, Bush rushed into this war with no allies worth mentioning (except for the UK). In the first war, the coalition provided over 200,000 troops and around 70% of the funding for the war (roughly 20 times more what it got this time around). The war is currently costing the US tax payers around $100 billion per year and if the present administration remains in power, it is unlikely to get any significant help from any of the nations that can really help. Stated in other words, if Bush wins, the US tax payer and the US armed forces will have to continue to sustain the Iraq burden for several more years to come....
The only positive with Bush from an Indian perspective is that he has not spoken against outsourcing. While this is painful for american workers, it is great for India. It is not a surprise therefore that most of India's establishement supports Bush's relection. Bush has used these "improvements" in America's relations with India as an example of his foreign policy successes. The reality is that anti-americanism is very high in India (as it is in much of the world) and that Indians are only playing ball because they love American money more than they hate this American adminstration.
Marlon
