US elections

Today, the American nation will vote for electing a president who will lead them for the next four years. The contest between the sitting president Barrack Obama and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney appears very close and either could win the election.
They are neck-to-neck despite the fact that neither offers any credible solutions for pulling the US economy out of the pit it is in, though Obama can claim that he prevented a total collapse of the US financial, mortgage and auto sectors besides reforming the healthcare sector.
Obama can also claim having devised a strategy for America's exit from Iraq and Afghanistan, and avoided intervening directly in Syria. But, while 61 percent Americans oppose US military interventions, he couldn't convince America's war machinery to shun its America-damaging posture.
All that changed was a shift to drone attacks whose legality is increasingly being questioned. Reviewing a book "Why America failed - the roots of imperial decline" by Morris Berman, to be published by John Wiley & Sons, Professor David Masciotra explains this tragedy very vividly.
He says American mindset defies change because "America is forced to identify itself in opposition to a demonic other. Native savages, communists, Islamofascists - all deliberately misunderstood millions - are not merely believers in a different lifestyle or political system, but enemies of all that is good, just, and pure in the world, and so must be annihilated from the face of the earth."
Masciotra regrets the misconceived belief that "America will rise victorious - its way of life preserved, but never examined [for its flaws]." That's why, on foreign policy, both presidential hopefuls sound alike when promising continued bashing of the millions referred to above.
Romney sounds wholly reckless while proposing to increase defence spending from 3 percent of the GDP to 4 percent ($1 trillion), and simultaneously insisting on tax cuts as the route to reviving the US economy, but doesn't explain the logic behind anticipated success of this strategy.
Romney's clever-by-half supporters explain his fiscal policy as the "necessary rubbish" for attracting the fanatical Republicans. Romney, they say, doesn't mean a word of it. That this makes democracy sound like a sick joke doesn't bother these Republicans.
On the treatment of Pakistan, both promise higher use of drones with Romney insisting that it was the "right" thing to do, though the policy is violative of Pakistan's sovereignty, yielded proven counterproductive results, and is now being challenged in courts in the US and the UK.
Neither regrets the raid on Abbottabad. Obama insists that "had we asked Pakistan's permission we would not have gotten it". To Romney, "Pakistan doesn't have a civilian leadership that is calling the shots... but it's not the time to divorce a nation on earth that has 100 nuclear weapons, and is on the way to double it".
Romney made it worse by saying "if it (Pakistan) falls apart, or becomes a failed state, there are nuclear weapons there, and you've got terrorists there who could grab [those weapons]." That's where his concern ended for a country that the US still keeps calling a 'strategic ally'.
Both Obama and Romney overlook the immense sufferings of the Pakistanis as a consequence of their government's blind acquiescence to a role in the US 'war on terror'. In fact, Pakistan's treatment by the US over the years sets the worst example of the price a state must pay for being a 'US ally'.
In an earlier book "The Twilight of American Culture" Berman opined that US foreign policy was exploitative, aggressive and disastrous. The stretch of the American arm around the globe created enemies and achieved little for the overwhelming mass of its own citizens.
This mindset reflects the prolonged corruption of America's educational system - a "collapse that involves a progressive weakening of a society's political and administrative center." That this has happened is no longer in doubt; the state of the US economy amply reflects that.
Obama's critics portray him as a destroyer of capitalism although he saved it from total collapse. Reason: his emphasis on stricter market regulation that prevents the rise of too-big-to-fail monstrosities. But his critics insist on "small government" so that regulation again becomes ineffective.
As early as 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that "As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: How much money will it bring in?"
Judging everything on utilitarian yardsticks assumes that nothing has intrinsic value. This mindset gradually crossed the Atlantic and then spread far and wide including into China in the late 1980s. Pakistan too is a victim of it, and is now in its worst-ever state.
Jimmy Carter was the only US president in the past three decades who stood for humanity and rationality. He lost his re-election bid by a huge margin to Ronald Reagan who deregulated US markets to serve the "greed-is-good" theology and sponsored death squads in Latin America.
In the current election campaign, presidential hopeful Ron Paul had pointed to this insanity. He opposed US military interventions abroad because they had given the US a horrible image, as confirmed by US Senators and Congressmen who visited these countries.
He sought focusing on domestic issues to contain the miseries caused by waste of resources that were spent on wars that the US fought in the last four decades based on concocted but well publicised allegations eg 9/11, WMD in Iraq, and 'popular' dissent against Qadhafi.
Ron Paul asked the Americans to accept these errors by electing a president who could rid the administration of warmongers to rebuild America and its image. He was the only American leader to oppose the invasion of Iran that Israel is pushing the US to launch.
Far more importantly, he wanted the Americans to focus their innovative energies on developing technology that serves mankind, not invaders - a distinction that was America's pride until leaders like Eisenhower led the country, but not thereafter.
With Ron Paul sidelined in the primary polls, there is little hope that the next US administration would be a saner regime. If elected (more likely), Obama will continue his existing policies because he doesn't have a choice; it lies with the clan that has ruled the US for decades.
This is not a good omen for the Americans and the rest of humanity, and Pakistan could be its worst sufferer due to its linkages to the US because none, including the EU, benefited from such linkages; look at the disdain the US has for the euro as an alternative to the US dollar.