by kcurie
Sun Oct 14th, 2007 at 02:14:48 PM EST
LUC : Law of Unintended Consequences.
This is the lemma I use to sum up the Bush-Cheney administration. They try to pursuit one goal and turn out to get something completely different (Monty Python style). This may seem a rather stupid assessment of how Bush has made an impact in the US society and in the Iraqi society but not the world. Well, actually, it may be not so stupid assesment for the US since P. Krugman says that if they would have been more competent the US would not be a republic by now. But just because we know that the US tortures, it is in huge debt, the middle class is been strongly hit by the credit bubbles, the elites do not care about children’s health care, and does no do anything to address global warming, it does not mean that other administrations or more competent people would have carried it through in a different way, maybe they would have hidden those aspects better. Bush is the symptom , not the disease, some people here say.
In a word, I have always thought that the big difference between Reagan and Bush has always been the disdain of the administration (and the USSR of course). And now brace yourself, because , while this disdain has destroyed Iraq and it is in the process of create a complete and awful Gilded Age in the US, the net result for the world has been "LUCILY" HUGELY POSITIVE… provided they DO NOT BOMB IRAN
Follow me below the fold….
We have addressed here how Russia has made a comeback with the new nuclear race and high oil prices thanks to the new MAD situation, how Latin America has been extreme poverty reduced to below 20% at an accelerated pace in 2006 and similar values are expected for 2007 while the US was looking somewhere else (to the Middle East oil) and left-of-center policies have been applied everywhere in the continent, even hardcore left policies in some countries. We have talked about how the US has lost any influence in Asia a couple of decades before than expected thanks to the US debt in Chinese hands (so many links I think they are not necessary). This has produced the effect of .. controlling the crazy nut in North Korea. We have also talked about how all the soft power in economic issues has crossed the Atlantic and now Europe establishes world regulation on economic product (Imagine if we would also be a political union and not only economic?). We have also discussed that it is very difficult to asses what the rest of the Middle East will look like in some years, but a more balanced power/sharing situation seems to come through with Iran as the local pseudo-winner.
In a word, the rest of the world is much more better now thanks to the dismantling of US soft power and the inability to project hard power anywhere with the army completely in the dumps.
All the world? really all the world… But what about Africa? and what about global warming?
The truth is that we have not addressed Africa. Is Africa really now better off than eight years ago. Has the irrelevance and lack of US involvement good for the region? And china influence… we always talk in generalities because it is very difficult to get real data about it.
But let me leave Africa for another diary where extensive research is needed to compare the situation now and one decade ago and let me focus on global warming.
Would we better off with an A. Gore administration? really? What do you think? Are you sure that a Gore administration would have accomplished anything? or was it better to let the world move on the topic leaving US behind? Will Hillary Clinton address the topic? And isn’t it easier for her to take strong measures after A. Gore Nobel Prize?
As you may know I think that the increase in oil prices is a good thing because it will, basically, only effect private consumption of oil in cars. There is no energy shortage.. only a shortage of oil for driving private cars/trucks. There is enough oil to cover the needs of agriculture, chemical companies and transport of goods for decades to come if we use trains and ships… but not private cars and not trucks. So the global warming problem should be addressed on these two fronts, getting rid of private cars before the oil peaks and getting rid of coal firing plants without sequestration…
Do you really think that A. Gore could have done something different? Imagine, in the best of the worlds, a US administration pursuing the Europe policies. Would that be enough? would it be a good thing? Couldn’t we be forgetting about the problem using an insufficient medicine? Frankly I do not know…. so please, I would like to read a bunch of comments about it. Let ma be clear I completely grant that Bush has been awful for the US and Iraq but I also think that it has been great news for Russia, Europe, China, Africa, India and Latin America (with pending research on Africa) So, please could someone convince me that LUC can not be applied to global warming? Because, frankly I am not sure…
