The Loss

Over the last six years the Bush administration has led the United States into its greatest loss since the Vietnam War. And that loss has nothing to do with military success or failure in Iraq, Afghanistan or the war on terror. The loss is that of Moral Authority. The shining city on the hill, which shone brightly with the fall of the Berlin Wall, is now obscured by the fog of paranoia and the quest for power; the quest for security at the expense of liberty.

America stood out in 1989 not as a beacon of perfection or the ultimate society, but as a sharp contrast to the corruption and moral decay that fell the Soviet empire. Even through the 1991 Gulf War the United States maintained itself as flawed, but with a stead moral compass. President George HW Bush put together a coalition of nations to liberate a small nation overrun by a large one only for the sake of territorial expansion and a grab at wealth. There was an undercurrent that this was only being done to defend the supply of oil, but the broad coalition validated the use of force and showed that the United States was not acting brashly solely in its own national interest, but was acting as the leader of the international community.

The United States is no longer the leader of the international community. The coalition of the willing sent into Iraq in 2003 was a mere shadow of the coalition that liberated Kuwait in 1991. The outpouring of solidarity with the American people following 9/11, the zenith of which was the declaration of French editorial boards that "we are all Americans" and the playing of the Star Spangled Banner by the Welsh Guard at Buckingham Palace, has collapsed into near universal condemnation of Bush administration policies both at home and abroad.

The American people have finally recognized that the erosion of their civil liberties by the Bush Administration does not assure security, but political tyranny. The once moral Bush administration advocating "faith-based initiatives", whose political philosophy was based upon the teachings of Jesus Christ, is now shunned by the conservatives who championed him.

However, America is on its way to regaining its moral authority. The American people are rejecting the ways of the Bush Administration. The abuses of the Patriot Act are coming out which will lead to its repeal, or at very least its emasculation. The majority of the populace has taken to hear the truism that those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. The Bush administration is reviled like that of Nixon -- however, without the foreign policy success (and of course we cannot forget the Endangered Species Act which may qualify Nixon as a "compassionate conservative" at least in regard to animals). On both sides of the political spectrum Americans have recognized that we have lost our way and it is time to get back on course. Presidential candidates on both sides are rejecting the absolutism brought forth by the unitary executive and a real debate is now occurring; and open and honest debate, while dirty, is the only way to clean-up America's reputation in the world and once again become that beacon that lets the world see both its qualities and its flaws.