May 19, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

DISTURBING HISTORICAL PARALLELS

George W. Bush frequently uses historical analogies. He uses them completely wrong, of course. His most recent historical reference was to "appeasement" of the Nazis in the years before World War II. Bush suggested that diplomacy with today's terrorists would be equivalent to appeasement back then. But history if used correctly can be instructive. There are disturbing parallels in the fall of previous world powers and the United States today. This article by Kevin Phillips is at www.washingtonpost.com:

More than 80 percent of Americans now say that we are on the wrong track, but many if not most still believe that the history of other nations is irrelevant -- that the United States is unique, chosen by God. So did all the previous world economic powers: Rome, Spain, the Netherlands (in the maritime glory days of the 17th century, when New York was New Amsterdam) and 19th-century Britain. Their early strength was also their later weakness, not unlike the United States since the 1980s.

There is a considerable literature on these earlier illusions and declines. Reading it, one can argue that imperial Spain, maritime Holland and industrial Britain shared a half-dozen vulnerabilities as they peaked and declined: a sense of things no longer being on the right track, intolerant or missionary religion, military or imperial overreach, economic polarization, the rise of finance (displacing industry) and excessive debt. So too for today's United States.