Republished: The Problems America Faces

This content was originally posted on benscomputer.no-ip.org 25th Sep 2007

"When the rich wage war, its the poor who die"

This article is quite heavily inspired by some of the comments over on Sasha Abramsky's Comment is Free Blog. As many are already aware the United States of America is non too popular across the globe, but what has caused this? Many (I'll admit not all) of the Americans I have met/spoken to have been perfectly nice, yet the US is hated all across the globe.

The question is why? The obvious response (and one given by many Americans) is that the current administration is responsible for the lack of respect across the globe. How much of this is true is debatable, but very few people would argue that current US foreign policy raises peoples hackles.

The simple fact is that America acts as though it exists to enforce it's beliefs onto other people. Whether through military force or through whining to the World Trade Organisation about piracy. The issue is that America's beliefs have been corrupted by a Capitalistic attitude, many of America's actions appear to be influenced by corporate will.
    Very few countries are willing to change their laws simply to please American businesses. Certainly very few would be willing to see the US in control of all the worlds oil interests, but for the time being the US will continue to act as it see's fits, regardless of the beliefs of it's own citizens.

Unfortunately the one thing that looks set to prevent the US from continuing to act in this way will also penalise it's citizens for being USians, the US's economy (and I might add the British Economy) appears to be teetering a little, and could be on the edge of a major recession. The US is spending a vast amount of funding on wars around the globe, and both the drop in value of the dollar and the countries foreign policies are leading to companies leaving US soil. The more of these companies decide to trade under the Euro or some other currency the more the value of the Dollar will decline. The citizens of the US will feel the crunch before their government do, however eventually the Government are likely to find that their power is declining, and some new power will step into it's place. Many have suggested that this power will in fact be China.

Regardless of how you feel about 'superpowers' there will always be one, the assumption that it will always be the U.S.A is incredibly naive.

Whilst I cannot defend the deaths of the innocent citizens on September the 11th, the countries foreign policy is at least partially responsible. The fact that the response was to take civillian lives is completely unforgiveable, however the US Government did play its part in shaping the fate of those who died. For quite a while now the US government has been meddling in the middle east, and unfortunately it's citizens and tax-payers are paying the price.

Regardless of your views on whether the war is just or not, there are deaths happening over there. Both civillian and military, and whilst our propoganda friendly television stations paint a nicer picture, the fact is that the 'rebels' are not the only ones taking lives. Iraqi's are also being killed, and not just by other Iraqi's. Any loss of live will only serve to make people angry, whether it is Patriotic Americans mourning the loss of their countrymen, or whether it is an Iraqi father mourning the loss of his 12 year old son to friendly fire.

The sad fact is that the fallout from the Iraq war is being felt all around the world, and not just through acts of Terrorism.  Throughout the world there are signs of racial unrest within communities,  people of Arabic descent are  being attacked purely fo their colour. Many of them are not even Iraqi, racism appears not to discriminate between Iraqi's, Iranians, Persian or Syrians. The racial fallout that could occur due to the occupation of Iraq could last for decades and will undoubtedly needlessly claim many lives.

Whilst all of this does present a serious problem, it is important to understand that knee-jerk anti-americanism is not right. Whilst the current Administration (and most of the recent Administrations) have done some atrocious things in the name of capitalism, it is not necessarily the will of the US Citizens. Many will argue that the Bush Administration was voted in, but then so was Blair. It is more than possible for the majority of the country to not want Blair in, but if they do not agree on who should take his place the minority that want Labour in power could amount to more than the divided majority. The same is also possible in the US, the advent of the Internet also means that many US Citizens are becoming increasingly aware of the propoganda levied on them by their government.

I expect their will be a change within the next Ten years, whilst it may be a case of 'Better the Devil you know' there are more than a few people across the globe who will be glad to see the US government humbled.