Rising powers have the US in their sights

Edit: the striking thing about the Bush regime, and the US foreign policy elites in general during Bush's rule, has been their utter impotence in doing anything about these developments, despite the supposedly vast powers at their command. They have made some big messes, but they have thereby acclerated rather than slowed the process of decline that started with the VietNam mistake.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States stood tall - militarily invincible, economically unrivaled, diplomatically uncontestable. and the dominating force on information channels worldwide. The next century was to be the true "American century", with the rest of the world molding itself in the image of the sole superpower.

Yet with not even a decade of this century behind us, we are already witnessing the rise of a multipolar world in which new powers are challenging different aspects of US supremacy - Russia and China in the forefront, with regional powers Venezuela and Iran forming the second rank. These emergent powers are primed to erode US hegemony, not confront it, singly or jointly.

How and why has the world evolved in this way so soon? The George W Bush administration's debacle in Iraq is certainly a major factor in this transformation, a classic example of an imperialist power, brimming with hubris, overextending itself. To the relief of many - in the US and elsewhere - the Iraq fiasco has demonstrated the striking limitations of power for the globe's highest-tech, most destructive military machine. In Iraq, Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser to two US presidents, concedes in a recent op-ed, the US is "being wrestled to a draw by opponents who are not even an organized state adversary".

The invasion and subsequent disastrous occupation of Iraq and the mismanaged military campaign in Afghanistan have crippled the credibility of the United States. The scandals at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, along with the widely publicized murders of Iraqi civilians in Haditha, have badly tarnished America's moral self-image. In the latest opinion poll in Turkey, a secular state and member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, only 9% of Turks have a "favorable view" of the US (down from 52% just five years ago).

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IH22Ak01.html

we are no longer in charge of our future and destiny, which has NOW been turned over to other nations.

Glittery on the outside, moldy and corrupt on the inside. Whatever improvements and repairs Clinton was able to effect were obliterated by BushCo within 6 months of taking office. And I mean "taking" in the most literal, thieving way.