The World's Stake in the U.S. Elections

The Congolese child soldiers above are not voting in any of the U.S. primaries but like the rest of the world have have an interest vested in the outcome of the U.S. elections. It is easy for Americans to get caught up in the hoopla and rhetoric of change emanating from the various campaigns but it is easy to loose sight of the global issues at stake and the steep price for failure that the world pays if the status quo goes unchanged.
One the greatest damages inflicted on the U.S. by the Bush administration has been to the reputation and prestige of the country. Unfortunately America's regard in the world was probably overestimated by it's citizens to even prior to GWB but now it is unarguably worse. To really gauge if America undergoes meaningful change as a result of the upcoming elections it's helpful to look at just a few of many issues by which the country can be judged.
The Middle East with the long neglected plight of the Palestinian people is an area the brings into sharp focus the world's view of American lack of balance and justice. As Laurie King-Irani at Electronic Intifada reports there appears to be little cause for optimism that this will change regardless of who gets the Democratic nomination:

" I was living in Nazareth, conducting my dissertation research. When I found out Clinton had been elected, I let out a whoop of joy and believed that a new era of sanity, justice and decency had dawned.

Several months later, I began to wonder. While at a conference in Jerusalem I picked up a copy of New York Times. The lead story in the magazine, entitled "St. Hillary," featured a cover photo of Hillary Clinton dressed completely in white and looking quite self-righteous. In the course of reading the article, I learned that while in Law School at Yale, Hillary had decided, during a classroom debate about Palestine/Israel, that some people were "simply evil," and thus had no rights because they undertook terrorist actions. (I'm not sure if she was still a registered Republican back then ...)

I wished my Palestinian friends and neighbors could sit and chat with Hillary Clinton for a little while about the daily realities and systematic discrimination that they faced then -- and face even more so now -- under occupation. Now a particularly exciting election year is upon us. Before the Democratic race narrowed down to Obama and Clinton, I was rooting for Dennis Kucinich, because his message resonated with my "Big Issue": fair, just, and sane US foreign policies in the Middle East and outrage at the treatment of the Palestinian people................................

" Last summer, I watched a CNN broadcast during which the Democratic hopefuls underwent a cable catechism examination administered by Soledad O'Brien. Former Senator John Edwards and Clinton were grilled on their personal faith and how it has helped them in their private lives.

Obama got the booby-trapped political question: "Are Palestinians treated badly by Israel?" His answer was lame, and appeared ill-informed. Given that he is probably not ill-informed, however, it might have been dishonest. Obama responded that "although Palestinians are often put in situations that we would not want our own families to endure," it was sadly necessitated by the paramount need to safeguard Israelis from dangerous terrorists.

Obama is a lawyer. He should know something about the Geneva Conventions. He should know a bit about Israeli violations of international law, and the dozens of UN resolutions that have criticized the Israeli government and called for an end to the occupation.

Despite increasing activism, the existence of alternative news media, and growing public discomfort with the Bush administration's Middle East misadventures, it's really disappointing that an attractive front-runner in this key election did not feel secure enough to tell the truth. The public is way out in front of Congress on this issue, but given the demands of campaign funding and the fear of the sorts of underhanded attacks that AIPAC (the American Israeli Public Action Committee, i.e., the pro-Israel lobby) inflicts on those who deviate from a pro-Israeli narrative, anyone who hopes to attain office in Washington, DC is held hostage to the lobby's single-minded goal of assuring unconditional support for Israel no matter how badly it behaves."

Another area that tests American ethics as well as quite a few others is the ongoing slaughter in the Congo. While Darfur gets the lion's share of American attention to Africa for reasons that are worth questioning, the by far bloodiest conflict on the continent has been playing out for more than a decade. Frequently cited as one of those places where the bloodshed is just part of third-world lack of education and post-colonial backwardness, the real story is an indictment of the greed of the West for natural resources and the inhumanity that is tolerated and promoted as useful tool to ensure an uninterrupted flow of gems and minerals. Keith Harmon Snow on Dissident Voice has an invaluable article to help sort out the sordid mess, sadly once again the U.S. has some explaining to do:

"Maurice Templesman is one of the top funders of Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. Templesman was the unofficial ambassador to the Congo (Zaire) for years, but a new Israeli-American tycoon has replaced him. In the world of bling bling and bling bang, some things change, some stay the same. The CIA, the MOSSAD, the big mining companies, the offshore accounts and weapons deals—all hidden by the Western media. The holocaust in Central Africa has claimed some six to ten million people in Congo since 1996, with 1500 people dying daily.¹ But while the Africans are the victims of perpetual Holocaust, the persecutors hide behind history, complaining that they are the persecuted, or pretending they are the saviors. Who is responsible?"

Lastly what of the American empire? This is a project that has been an example of bipartisan cooperation since the inception of the American National Security State at the end of WWII. According to Chalmers Johnson, respected former CIA analyst and now contributor to the American Empire Project, the scope of this empire is mind-boggling and probably economically non-sustainable:

"The worldwide total of U.S. military personnel in 2005, including those based domestically, was 1,840,062 supported by an additional 473,306 Defense Department civil service employees and 203,328 local hires. Its overseas bases, according to the Pentagon, contained 32,327 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and 16,527 more that it leased. The size of these holdings was recorded in the inventory as covering 687,347 acres overseas and 29,819,492 acres worldwide, making the Pentagon easily one of the world's largest landlords.

These numbers, although staggeringly big, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2005 Base Structure Report fails, for instance, to mention any garrisons in Kosovo (or Serbia, of which Kosovo is still officially a province) -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel built in 1999 and maintained ever since by the KBR corporation (formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root), a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston.

The report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq (106 garrisons as of May 2005), Israel, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, even though the U.S. military has established colossal base structures in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian areas since 9/11. By way of excuse, a note in the preface says that "facilities provided by other nations at foreign locations" are not included, although this is not strictly true. The report does include twenty sites in Turkey, all owned by the Turkish government and used jointly with the Americans. The Pentagon continues to omit from its accounts most of the $5 billion worth of military and espionage installations in Britain, which have long been conveniently disguised as Royal Air Force bases. If there were an honest count, the actual size of our military empire would probably top 1,000 different bases overseas, but no one -- possibly not even the Pentagon -- knows the exact number for sure."

The Empire is a true holy cow in the temple of American self interest and reflects at the very least the country's inability to to come to grips with its foreign petroleum dependency. Any president with a mandate for change and the fortitude to deal with this would be nothing short of a revolutionary. The question is are there any out there?