A shrinking beacon

In 2007, American credibility isn't debatable -- it's an oxymoron. Living overseas makes me a 193 cm scapegoat for the failures of the Bush administration, despite my insistence that America is (finally) waking up to the immorality and incompetence of those whom Aussies correctly identify as the people-chosen leaders of the United States. "What took Americans so f*cking long?" they ask.

Fear, or the promulgation of it, is the short answer, which the likes of the increasingly dishonorable Guiliani and the venom-spewing, petroleum-sniffing Cheney continue to wield like dull swords. They offer the very worst face to the world: The tying of American values to the deeds of monsters; the unaccountability of those who held positions of power to PREVENT those deeds; the daily amplification and packaging of terror for political gain. [See Guiliani get torn a new one in this brilliant 'Special Commentary' from Keith Olbermann.]

Thus does America's luster grow more and more faint. And like a saltwater fog corroding every metal it mists, Bush and his crew have eaten away at America's international efforts to show rather than tell. Religious evangilism has been an oft-applied corrossive, and in the case of sexual education has seeped in as 'abstinence only' disinformation. Bush & Co. have arm-twisted other countries dependent on U.S. aid to acquiesce or else. Like children at the mercy of an abusive parent, these nations do as their told out of self-preservation but never recover from the unnecessary blows.

It's the sort of issue 'progressives' like myself have bellowed about for years. Though a trifle when compared to the piling of more bloodied corpses in Iraq, it's a telling example of the gutting of America's soul, and the overdue need for those responsible to be chased from their thrones with cries of OUT! OUT! NO MORE!!!