Do you have the courage to imagine a world without superpowers? Venezuela’s populist President Hugo Chávez does. So does Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Before the 118-nation Non-Aligned Movement Summit and later the United Nations General Assembly last week, both men railed against what they called American imperialism, oppression and hegemony, and promised that the future would be different. “The American empire is in sharp decline,” boasted Chávez. “In this century it will cease to exist.” Their bitterly anti-American invective is hardly new, but a chorus of voices is suddenly rising to join them. Across the underdeveloped world, more and more nations, comprising hundreds of millions of people, agree: The United States is responsible for their poverty, their stagnation, their shattered dreams.
Addressing the General Assembly last week, President Bush could only muster polite diplomatic applause as he tried to convince skeptical world leaders of the merits of his Middle East freedom plan. In contrast, Chávez brought down the house by ostentatiously crossing himself and calling Bush a “world dictator” and a “devil” who left the podium reeking of sulfur. Ahmadinejad did him one better by accusing the United Nations of being little more than a front for a sinister United States seeking “hegemony” over the rest of the world: “Certain powers … consider their decisions superseding that of over 180 countries. They consider themselves the masters and rulers of the entire world and other nations as only second class in the world order,” he lamented. “If the governments of the United States or the United Kingdom, who are permanent members of the Security Council, commit aggression, occupation and violation of international law, which of the organs of the UN can take them to account?” he demanded to know.
It’s a question that resonates from Bolivia, where President Evo Morales was elected after declaring himself the United States’ “worst nightmare,” to Sudan, where President Omar Hassan al-Bashir recently denounced America as plotting to dismember his nation, to Lebanon, where the militant Islamist Hezbollah draped banners reading “Made in the USA” over the bombed-out rubble of buildings destroyed by Israeli bombs. When Chávez accuses that Bush “looks at your color, and he says, ‘Oh, there’s an extremist,'” people in the Third World agree.
Only a little more than a decade ago, America’s vision of an open society of law and order, with respect and freedom for all, was powerful enough to peacefully overcome the authoritarian Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. That America was still symbolized by blue jeans and rock ‘n’ roll in the eyes of the rest of the world. The Bush administration, in its six short years in office, has changed America’s image – and not for the better. As a presidential candidate, then-Governor Bush spoke of the need for a more compassionate foreign policy, saying, “If we’re an arrogant nation, they’ll resent us. If we’re a humble nation, but strong, they’ll welcome us.” But after five years of a deeply flawed War on Terror, Bush is fighting his own political party in Congress for the power to torture detainees and struggling to defend an invasion of Iraq that, according to a classified National Intelligence Estimate, has actually increased the threat of terrorism around the world.
America needs to return to its roots as a bastion of freedom and a friend to all of the world’s nations and people, and Bush needs to recall his prophetic words of six years ago. He has two years left to show the world that Chávez and Ahmadinejad are wrong.
Cyrus Hadadi is a senior electrical engineering, mathematics and history major. He can be reached at chadadi@yahoo.com.
