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Three Presidents have received confirmations of a renewed term of office recently – President George W. Bush of the United States, and flowing from his authority, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan.
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| To those who watched the 2004 US presidential election results being collated, it became obvious that the United States remains as divided in the election year 2004 as it had been at the same time four years ago. As each state gradually revealed its true colours, the map of America resettled into the earlier pattern of a broad swathe of Republican red with fringes of Democrat blue on its East and the West coasts. In physical terms, the features of modern America remained substantially unchanged - a reddening face with blue ears on either side, one cocked eastwards and the other westwards. |
| It is perhaps not accidental that the states that voted Democrat are closest to a world across the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, or that the message of the party’s candidate John Kerry emphasised the need for America not simply to lead the rest of the world but to be a part of it, and to use those ears to listen to it. It is certainly not accidental that the states that voted for George W. Bush belong to middle America, an America that prefers and now clearly intends to look inwards, to listen only to itself. [EXTRACT] |
| Published in DAWN 14 Nov. 2004, and reprinted in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006). |
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