Why is the US so powerful?

international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis Wednesday February 08, 2006 20:50 by Yompy

How can we defeat them?

Values such as political freedom, capitalism, individualism, democracy, scientific inquiry, rationalism, and open debate form an especially lethal combination when applied to warfare.

America is certainly evil but it is clearly successful at achieving and maintaining its power.

Despite the Patriot Act it still allows an enormous level of political freedom compared to its enemies in Iran and North Koea, its capitalist system is tinkered with by the political elites to favour the rich but still the vast majority of ordinary Americans enjoy a level of prosperity unequalled by much of the rest of the human species, individualism practised investors, speculators, workers and consumers fuels the success of its economy, democracy though manipulated by the media and money is much more effective at providing greater legitimacy to the Democrats and Republicans than one man rule by Saddam Hussein ever did, scientific enquiry is the bedrock for the military industrial complex and Americas overwhelming firepower in both conventional and nuclear armaments while Iran has to train its scientists abroad and buy its technology from Russia and China, rationalism may be on the decline as regards the rise of creationism but not in the political sphere where the shrewd application of force of arms with the exception of Vietnam and Iraq have meant the America is almost unchallenged globally. Bin Laden has shown himself to be quite clever but he still puts more faith in Allah's intervention.
Meanwhile openly bitter political debate resulted in the largest percentage electoral turnout in American history - Bush only barely shaved back the lead of John Kerry. Every minutia of the War on Terror from insufficient armour on humvees, battle deaths to prisoner abuse and phone tapping is brought to light by the media in the US while intellectuals such as Chomsky and Vidal, entertainers suchas Jay Leno, Sean Penn and Tim Robbins and George Clooney and ordinary citizens such as Cindy Sheehan and millions of anti-war demonstrators can openly condemn Bush. Republicans can justifiable claim greater legitimacy because a torrent of anti-Bush rhetoric failed to convince 50% of Americans.

Nobody seriously believes that radical Islamic terrorist and Middle Eastern regimes can truly challenge American power - they may well inflict a few bloody noses such as 9/11 and the Iraq quagmire - but they lack the values of political freedom, capitalism, individualism, democracy, scientific inquiry, rationalism, and open debate upon which America trives.
The failure of the Soviet regime shows that Marxism cannot compete against the American system.

China and India present the best hope to combat the evil of American power. They have begun to shed the backward systems of communism and isolation and Hindu feudalism that have restricted their potential to dominate the world.
America has a puny population in comparison to these waking giants.
Imagine a billion plus Chinese and a billion plus Indians put the same values that America has used to conquer the earth into practise and outdid them?

The result would be rival competing poles of influence with the result that America's freedom to make unrestricted war would be no more.

Bush is right about one thing - countries that share the same values do not go to war with each other.

if you cant beat them join them you might say?
No! Beat them at their own game!