That was a quote from the Hindu scripture that J.Robert Oppenheimer recalled at the first ever explosion of an atomic weapon at Alomogordo.That could also describe what we, as a nation, have become since that fateful day.Far from being seen as the liberators of humanity from the scourge of Nazism, we are now universally hated, reviled and feared.The rest of humanity fears that, in our quest for domination, we will end up destroying the world.
The War on Terror, that Bush has unleashed, is seen by many as part of an Imperial Crusade to keep the poor and powerless peoples of the world perpetually under American domination.That aspect of this so called war is completely missed by what passes for our Press these days. That the people we are supposed to be fighting are, to a man, literally destitute, powerless and subject to the arbitrary power of tyrants who always happen to be our so called friends,i.e people like the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia, Mubarak, Musharraf, Sharon and the late unlamented Shah of Iran, Somoza,Pinochet and others too numerous to mention.We can proudly add our own home grown tyrant, Bush, to the parade of the ignoble.True to our characteristic thoroughness in such matters and the inevitable cries of we are number one, he has done these monsters one better.He has set aside the Geneva Conventions,instituted an illegal regime called Extraordinary Rendition and violated even our own Constitution which he has sworn to uphold.
The shame he has brought upon this nation with his War on Iraq pales in comparison to what he has done and failed to do when confronted with the havoc unleashed by Katrina and Rita. As usual he was not merely asleep at the wheel,he was busy strumming his guitar and eating cake on a political swing through the Midwest even as the people of New Orleans were drowning in the muck created by his negligence.The world has clearly seen what Frank Zappa has called the brick wall behind the facade of the smiling face of American Imperialism.
In the short span of his miserable regime, Bush has done something no one has been able to accomplish before.He has forever laid to rest the lie that America means well by other peoples, that it is a force for good at home and abroad and its transgressions need to be tolerated by others precisely for those reasons.That image has been shattered for good.No one at home or abroad buys that anymore.