The Failure of Bush's Revolution
Mostafa Zein Al-Hayat - 23/09/08//
After the fall of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, many people wrote about the dogma and rigidity of leftist thought. Most of these American analyses focused on the idea that permanent revolution is a feature of capitalism, whether in its view of the world, the renewal of its theory, or its support for social transformations, etc.
Leading this revolution at home and abroad over the last seven years has been President George Bush. He has taken this revolution to the end, as Philip Gordon wrote; using Bush's 2006 State of the Union address, Gordon concluded that the revolution had ended, in practical terms, but continued in the speeches and theories of the circles around Bush (Foreign Affairs, July 2006).
The end of the revolution has had tragic consequences. These are confirmed by the events of the Red Mosque in Pakistan a few months ago, and the explosions in Islamabad last week.
The Taliban and al-Qaeda have widened the scope of the war, which is no longer restricted to areas bordering Afghanistan. Pakistan, America's number one ally in the war on terror, has become threatened with domestic unrest or a military coup that will shake things up once again, or restore the relationship between the Taliban and the military establishment. It is no secret that the Taliban was produced by this institution, and was used for a long time to promote stability in Pakistan against its neighbor. If it were in the power of a US administration, any administration, to abandon its old alliance with the Islamists, the same does not go for the regime in Islamabad, whatever its nature, since the Taliban is a part of the country's social and political fabric. All parties, from the Islamic League of Nawaz Sharif, to the People's Party led by Asif Zardari, brandish religious slogans. After all, Pakistan came into being as an Islamic state.
The events in Pakistan have coincided with another consequence of the fall of the "Bush revolution," one that threatens the global economy, with the US economy leading the way, with collapse. The White House has promoted free markets and confronted any state intervention; it forced many countries to privatize public institutions and lift subsidies on basic goods. The president went even further, when he planned to privatize the army, as we see from the example of the mercenaries used in the Iraq war. This administration was obliged to intervene to halt the economic downslide, violating all of the principles of its president, who has proposed pumping $700 billion of taxpayer money into the system. In other words, Bush has resorted to nationalization, even if not on the socialist model, to save what can be saved, abandoning all of his earlier proposals.
Many states have formed and then fallen apart on the rubble of the Soviet Union. Communist and leftist parties have become "orphans," and some of their leaders have even embraced the Bush revolution. He has raised the neo-liberal banner and justified his wars and the crimes of his administration, from Pakistan to Iraq. After the fall of this revolution, people in these countries can only head for their sects and their tribes, to get ready for a new phase of civil wars and return to the sectarian state, perhaps in Lebanon and Palestine and other countries of the Levant, beginning with Iraq.
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