Mexican scholar criticizes “U.S. imperialism”
By Barnard R. Thompson
A commentary piece regarding the U.S. presidential
campaign and the forthcoming election, by Lorenzo Meyer, was published in the Diario de Yucatán (Mérida, Yucatán) on
August 6. Meyer, a respected and influential Mexican internationalist, is a political
scientist and historian at the prestigious El Colegio de México, in Mexico City.
The following are translated and edited excerpts
from the rather biased Mexican perspective article.
Meyer titled his opinion piece “Advantages
to Mexico in a Democrat win,” before noting that Mexicans can do little to influence the coming U.S. elections. Yet, he wrote, “… we at least have to understand what is at play there
in order to prepare ourselves to face its possible consequences.”
Before going on and on about Iraq, Al Qaeda and other
assertions of bellicose inclinations of George W. Bush, and extolling the touted Vietnam battle command experience of John
Kerry, Meyer states:
“In principal, when a U.S. president decides
to seek reelection as George W. Bush is now doing, he starts off with a huge advantage that comes from being the occupant
of The White House. The opposition, as well as disgruntled (members) within his
party who intend to dispute the candidacy, would have an uphill (battle). In
practice, those who challenge from within are not trying to oust him but to influence the party’s platform or plan….”
And Meyer went on to explain that Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney, whom he calls “even more conservative then Bush himself,” will go to the Republican National Convention
uncontested.
As to war and Al Qaeda, Meyer says in part: “In
principle, the U.S. is a country at war and that factor could define the electoral agenda, however in reality that is not
the case as the actual U.S. war is quite peculiar. On one side one of the adversaries,
Al Qaeda, is an Islamic organization without a country that is founded on a series of religious core ideas and objectives. No (Al Qaeda) links have yet been found to any nation or territory in particular,
which has not kept Washington from maintaining a sizable military contingent for an indefinite period of time in Afghanistan,
that was the center of Al Qaeda operations.”
“The other enemy of the U.S. is in Iraq. As is known, this latter country was rapidly occupied by the U.S. military in 2003,
after being falsely accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction,” Meyer says.
He follows this with other critical comments and innuendos regarding the U.S. invasion and presence in Iraq.
Seeming to change focus, Meyer says that so far the
election debate in the U.S. has centered more on the economy “than on the alleged war against the elusive Al Qaeda or
the unexpected Iraqi resistance.” But he continues: “Let’s
look closer at what John Kerry and the Democrats offer the U.S. electorate and indirectly the world as an alternative to the
foreign policy of Bush. Senator Kerry has emphasized and he will continue to
emphasize, that contrary to the current president who thanks to his last name was able to complete his military service in
the National Guard without having to leave the country, he (Kerry) volunteered to serve in the theater of war, and in Vietnam
he learned the brutality of war. And it is precisely due to that direct and personal
experience that Kerry today offers to be much more prudent than the current president, before launching the huge force of
U.S. imperialism.
“Still, John Kerry has not repudiated the supposed
U.S. right of ‘preventative attack.’ He has simply guaranteed that
he will be very careful in using it. Thus his is not the antithesis of Bush’s
position, it is basically the same. He has imposed imperial logic, only it has
been framed in a less high-handed way. And it is that commitment to multilateralism,
to consulting with the United Nations and friendly governments before acting, where lies from the Mexican perspective the
advantage of a Democrat win over the Republicans in November.
“It isn’t much, nor is it something contemptible,
as in the end an empire with a negotiating and multilateral vocation is preferable to one that is openly unilateral and arrogant,
and that divides the world in a Manichean manner: unconditional or irrelevant and adversarial,” Meyer wrote.
