Manipal, India — By granting itself a
patent on individual freedom combined with democratic elections, the West has
persuaded itself that it is seen as a benign entity in the rest of the world --
almost all of which decades ago was occupied and governed by European countries
intent on using native resources to promote their own interests.
However, the return of Western soldiery to
Afghanistan and Iraq has caused formerly colonized countries to fear that once
again they are at risk of occupation. Both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki have zero control over the militaries
swarming across their respective countries, or over many of the functions
normally associated with sovereignty. "Advisors" in both Kabul and
Baghdad have the final say, a fact that is not hidden from the local
populations.
Today, NATO forces in Afghanistan and
Coalition troops in Iraq are ensuring a steady increase in the insurgency.
George W. Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Angela Merkel and other Western
leaders have together performed a miracle -- they have made the Saddamites
popular in Iraq and the Taliban recover its resonance in Afghanistan.
Because of the melding of the identities of
the United States and the European Union into a single "Western"
entity, Bush rarely ventures beyond Europe -- and countries with
European-origin majorities -- in securing military allies for his numerous military
sallies into distant lands. Within the United States, only the west coast has
succeeded, to a limited extent, in freeing itself of the delusion that the
United States is a European country transplanted across the Atlantic. The South
and East are in thrall to a concept of nationhood with a European identity at
its core -- a concept expressed in the many writings of Samuel Huntington.
