THE WORLD WATCHES US
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| Fri, 09-19-2008 - 7:45pm |
If you don't think this is important, think again! It's called foreign relations.
"The Guardian" A British newspaper
by Jonathan Freedland:
"If Sarah Palin defies the conventional wisdom that
says elections are determined by the top of the ticket
and somehow wins this for McCain, what will be the reaction?
Yes, blue-state America will go into mourning once again,
feeling estranged in its own country. A generation of young
Americans - who back Obama in big numbers - will turn
cynical, concluding that politics doesn't work after all.
And, most depressing, many African-Americans will
decide that if even Barack Obama - with all his conspicuous
gifts - could not win, then no black man can ever be elected president.
But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I
fear most. For Obama has stirred an excitement around
the globe unmatched by any American politician in living
memory. Polling in Germany , France , Britain and Russia shows
that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern
repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America .
If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it
handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it
would be Barack Obama.
The crowd of 200,000 that rallied to hear him in Berlin
in July did so not only because of his charisma, but also
because they know he, like the majority of the
world's population, opposed the Iraq war. McCain supported it,
peddling the lie that Saddam was linked to 9/11.
Non-Americans sense that Obama will not ride roughshod
over the international system but will treat alliances and
global institutions seriously: McCain wants to bypass the
United Nations in favour of a US-friendly League of Democracies.
McCain might talk a good game on climate change, but a
repeated floor chant at the Republican convention was
"Drill, baby, drill!", as if the solution to global warming were not a
radical rethink of the US's entire energy system but more offshore oil rigs.
If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning
their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us
four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a
deeply unpleasant shift.
Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and
much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has
mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific
administration. But if McCain wins in November, that
might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will
conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique,
but Americans themselves. For it will have been the
American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a
once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh
start the world is yearning for.
And the manner of that decision will matter, too. If it
is deemed to have been about race - that Obama was
rejected because of his colour - the world's verdict will
be harsh. In that circumstance, Slate's Jacob Weisberg
wrote recently, international opinion would conclude that
"the United States had its day, but in the end couldn't put
its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race".
Even if it's not ethnic prejudice, but some other
aspect of the culture wars, that proves decisive, the
point still holds. For America to make a decision as grave
as this one - while the planet boils and with the US fighting
two wars - on the trivial basis that a hockey mom is
likable and seems down to earth, would be to convey a lack of
seriousness, a fleeing from reality, that does indeed
suggest a nation in, to quote Weisberg, "historical
decline". Let's not forget, McCain's campaign
manager boasts that this election is "not about
the issues."
Of course I know that even to mention Obama's support
around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large
Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the
"candidate of Europe " and making him seem less of
a patriotic American. But what does that say about
today's America , that the world's esteem is now
unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be
sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and,
make no mistake, we shall hear it."

Then again, the Guardian is the most left-wing paper in the UK.
Israel has elected a woman before.
Obama is running for a hostile takeover of the US on behalf of the anti-American international community. His plan is quite plainly to rape and pillage America’s wealth, and redistribute it to the rest of the world. His speech was brazenly candid about this.
He has already put forth this very plan in the S.2433 Global Poverty Act of 2007, which he authored in the Senate.This bill, in fact will stick the U.S for 845 BILLION dollars.
Thats $2500 dollars for every man, woman and child in America.
That's in addition to the BILLIONS we already funnel into third world countries who hate us. It's coming up for vote, and I urge all to contact their representatives to stop this Obama atrocity.
.
<Obama is running for a hostile takeover of the US on behalf of the anti-American international community. His plan is quite plainly to rape and pillage America’s wealth, and redistribute it to the rest of the world. His speech was brazenly candid about this.>
Too bad the mortgage bankers and AIG beat him to it already and the money made it into the pockets of wealthy bankers.
Sopal
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