It’s been obvious almost from the beginning of the first Bush Administration that neither Bush nor his kitchen cabinet had much interest in or knowledge of the world outside the USA. They blundered from one embarrassment to another, screwing up or forgetting funny foreign names, confusing Sunnis and Shiites (that’s after the penny finally dropped that the Middle East wasn’t populated by homogeneous Muslim terrorists), expressing child-like amazement at the size of Brazil on a map and so on.
One hoped that this ignorance reflected an innocent naivete; that these rather ordinary members of the American ruling class had stumbled into power in a time of perceived calm and prosperity and were simply unprepared to deal with the complex issues of foreign policy that were suddenly thrust upon them. One hoped, fervently, that the people concerned would have immediately embarked upon a crash course of education so they could develop more informed attitudes and policies over time.
One’s hopes were, unfortunately, in vain.
It’s now clear that Bush’s mob don’t know much about countries outside the USA because they couldn’t care less. They haven’t tried to educate themselves because as far as they’re concerned, the rest of the world is a kind of Sim City to be manipulated by the masters of the universe in Washington. The only thing that matters to these morally vacuous bastards is their own welfare and power. If anybody doubted that, there’s further proof in this latest display of utter contempt for the nations about whose rights Bush and company pretend to be so concerned:
Host George Stephanopoulos asked Hadley whether Bush would attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics, and Hadley then riffed on the issues surrounding protests in and around Tibet, the Olympic torch and the Dalai Lama. Only Hadley seemed too think the protests related to the Dalai Lama revolve around Nepal, a neighboring country that is largely Hindu, not Buddhist.
“If countries are really concerned about Nepal, we shouldn’t have this sort of non-issue of opening ceremonies or not. They should do the hard work of quiet diplomacy to urge the Chinese government — in their interest — to take advantage of this opportunity to do something,” Hadley said.
He continued: “What he’s doing on Nepal is what we think the international community ought to be doing, which is approaching the Chinese privately through diplomatic channels and sending a very firm message of concern for human rights, concern for what’s happening in Nepal.”
Stephen Hadley is Bush’s national security adviser.
No doubt we’ll get in due course the usual smarmy bullshit about how he ‘misspoke’ and of course he knows the difference between Nepal and Tibet. Just like of course John McCain understands that Iran hates al Qaeda and ‘misspoke’ when he suggested - on at least three separate occasions - that the former was training the latter.
The truth is they don’t know because they don’t care. They have a simple, single-minded objective: fight the endless war against all the thems who aren’t with us and are therefore against us. Xenophobia raised to the level of national purpose, as exemplified in the person of the appalling Daniel Pipes who is currently gracing us with his presence to drum up support for the campaign to eradicate Islam.
The forthcoming 2020 Summit asks participants:
How should Australia maximise its cooperation with its long-standing ally the United States?
Talk about asking the wrong question.
