America wakes up to the shift in global power
OPS_admin | Dec 07, 2009 | Comments 0
Andrew Sullivan
Last Tuesday night was a sobering affair if you are a supporter of America’s engagement with the world. In his defining speech on Afghanistan at the West Point military academy, Barack Obama’s own tone was extremely sober, and at times he seemed close to choking up as he weighed sending more young men and women into the wastes of Helmand. His audience of West Point cadets sat silently for the most part, some even fighting off sleep.
The pundits regretted that Obama had not pulled off a Henry V peroration, as if announcing a ninth year of counterinsurgency in a country thousands of miles away could be compared to Agincourt. And the polling found a public deeply ambivalent about extending the war further, while also afraid of the consequences of too rapid a departure.
This was a chastened rather than confident America. And it isn’t hard to see why. Obama emerged as a candidate, and then as a president, precisely because Americans saw that their country was so far off track. But the reason change was vital then is why the atmosphere is now so dire, and Obama’s inability to overcome it all (what human could?) has brought Americans back to the sobriety of their current predicament.
Full Story America wakes up to the shift in global power | Andrew Sullivan – Times Online.
Filed Under: Foreign Policy
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If we don't change our ways soon...
A new report by the Royal Society, chaired by Nobel prize-winning biologist Sir John Sulston warns that world population must be stabilized and consumption in wealthy nations must be reduced or the entire planet is in big trouble. As the report reads: "The number of people living on the planet has never been higher, their levels of consumption are unprecedented and vast changes are taking place in the environment. We can choose to rebalance the use of resources to a more egalitarian pattern of consumption... or we can choose to do nothing and to drift into a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills leading to a more unequal and inhospitable future."This is the same warning that President Jimmy Carter gave Americans back in the 1970's - but it was ignored when Ronald Reagan came to power with a "more positive" message basically telling Americans we can do whatever we want. And then after 9/11 - Bush told us all we should go shopping and consume ever more.And now with corporations calling the shots in Washington - long-term sustainability of the planet takes a back seat to short-term profits. If we don't change our ways soon - and embrace clean, alternative energy and educate women around the plant - then we all could be headed for a rough century.-Thom(Is there any chance we will learn in time? Tell us here.) -
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