It goes without saying that, in the United States, there is criticism of the government’s war program. It would of course be strange if, in the oldest democracy in the world, a drastic change toward a new era in domestic and foreign policy didn’t go off without debate, opposition, and resistance. In Europe, any kind of opposition raised in America is met with the most lively interest.

The citizens of “God’s own country” have elected the president. Once again the election campaign was, as befits the largest and most powerful of the free democracies, exemplary. This is not so much because of the perfect manner in which the candidates demonstrated how much this highlight of the people’s democratic sovereignty is a matter of the financial power the respective parties are able to muster for their propaganda productions.

Not a week goes by without someone accusing somebody of some human-rights violation. The accusers are politicians, journalists, and speakers from organizations committed to improving moral conduct in the world of states; generally they reside in the free West. The accused are generally politicians somewhere else, foreign governments, and “self-appointed” rulers. The court expected to take up the charge is primarily the international democratic public, i.e., more of an imagined judge, whose penal power consists in defaming the accused. When state powers capable of asserting themselves worldwide act as prosecutor, they not infrequently go ahead and declare themselves to be both judge and executor of their verdicts, which include quite harsh penalties. The club of European sovereigns and the U.N. in New York have additionally set up special courts that take up many an official action for human-rights violations in perfect legal form. The substance of the accusations is the great variety of more or less brutal acts that a ruling power commits against its subjects.

So how to judge such cases?

The United States, together with Great Britain, is at war with Iraq. Their declared goal is the removal of Iraq’s ruling regime. With that, they present the rest of the world with what are largely faits accomplis, demanding agreement by everyone and assistance from allies without allowing any other state any influence on their plans and proceedings, and thereby vexing these same allies quite a bit.

Freedom, which according to George W. Bush is a gift that God has given to all of mankind, is realized in free, equal and secret elections. These are what separate humane rule from tyranny. According to the American messenger of God’s gift, no people shall be deprived of the privilege of free elections. No society or culture is so backward or aberrant as to be ignorant of the glory of free elections, and no people is to be regarded as unripe for the right to vote. In fact, he maintains that it would be typical Western racism to believe that we who are privileged with the freedom to vote are the only ones worthy of this universal achievement of mankind, the only ones who deserve, desire and can treasure this act of liberty.