Try, for just one moment, to see the United States through the eyes of other nations: Under Bush, the US declared that the Geneva convention is no longer valid. In other words, Bush clearly plans to commit war crimes. Worse yet, by threatening Belgium and boycotting the World Court, Bush doesn't merely want to abstain from humane decency during war; he wants to have legal immunity for committing war crimes, and perhaps worse.

Bush also wants to ignore the majority of industrial nations who agreed to the Kyoto accord. Hence, others nations who sacrifice to stop global warming are being undermined by greed and ignorance, here. On top of that, in late 2002 Bush sent emissaries to threaten Germany and France for not supporting unprovoked war against Iraq, overturning a decades-long alliance capriciously--on the whim of a then-minority appointed president.

Faced with such threats, any clear-headed European would conclude that Bush is both small-minded and dangerous. In other words, the biggest threat on the map, both to the sovereignty and equality among nations, may now be the United States--under Bush. No other nation comes close in this regard. No other nation extends itself so broadly.

By turning back the clock on an official ban on CIA assassinations and by placing the agency under Porter Goss (who is seen in a 1960's photo sharing a Mexico City nightclub table with Barry Seal, the biggest narcotics trafficker in US history), Bush raises yet another threat against a peacable world order. According to some within the CIA, Bush has initiated a purge of CIA "liberals,” which could conceivably bring back the old practice of murdering foreign leaders. Given Bush aides’ threats to prevent Germany from ever becoming a world power, even the Europeans have to assume that Bush could decide to target them, too, if he felt that the need was great enough.

Faced with an increasingly undemocratic America, Europeans decided to form their own security apparatus, to separate themselves from the caprice and Gestapo-like threats of Bush's Christian Armageddon-minded White House.

In short, although people here in the US rarely hear about it, a major sea change may have occurred on this planet. The world is moving on, in many ways, without the United States. To billions of foreigners, Bush's war on Iraq appeared to be one of economic conquest, an attempt to muscle in on and steal another nation's vital resources. So, when Condi Rice and others said we'll need to be in Iraq about 7-10 years (just long enough to suck its oil wells dry), then followed up with a plan to privatize Iraq's industries, effectively placing them under US corporate control, it was no surprise that numerous nations condemned such intentions, further deepening the need to safeguard themselves against a capricious empire.

No reasonable analyst expects the Iraqi resistance to give up. They have close to one million pounds of high strength explosives, taken out of Iraqi bunkers while a motley crew of US soldiers guarded an entry road---from two miles’ distance. As a result, many more young, innocent lives will be wasted on Bush's plan to “remake” the Middle East. Judging by Afghanistan, where President Karzai is little more than the mayor of Afghanistan, where the Taliban control large sections of the country and opium has made a big come-back (comprising 70%, or more, of the world’s total), Bush's end product in Iraq probably won’t be exemplary.

At present, Iraq is a more dangerous place than it ever was. Bush summed up his failure neatly during his recent campaign: "Iraq is now the central front in the war on terrorism." No wonder that Russia, Brazil, India and China are forming a coalition of superpower-sized nations, at least partly framed as a safeguard against the madness of small-minded, personally vindictive men like George Bush. (See the India Daily article at http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/11-10-04.asp) Who can blame them?

Meanwhile, the US borrows heavily from other nations to fund its $7 trillion national debt, which drains the economies of numerous countries, preventing them from funding many of their own internal improvements. To have to prop up the US during a time of putsch-like threats to other nations doesn't sit well in some quarters, especially when the US is a deadbeat on Kyoto, the Geneva convention, war crimes liabilities and international justice. The US debt has sharply worsened with Bush's debacle in Iraq. Ironically, Bush now boasts that it’s time for him to spend his recently won electoral “capital.”

Although we wish it were otherwise, the outline above isn't just a scenario; it is clearly happening, although it may not please US readers to hear about it. Other nations are turning away from the United States in favor of a more lasting and probably more peaceable international order, an agreement between equals rather than the menace of a monopolar nightmare. And who’s to blame? Is it Bush, alone, or the unrestrained greed of corporate controlled government? When the animal “logic” of corporate excess is allowed to thrive unabated, such eventualities are to be expected. In some ways, the independent initiatives of other, more humbly concerned nations may lead to a more refined and more responsible international order.