A grand Enemies Tour awaits President Obama – Iran's Ahmadinejad, Syria's Assad, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, an al Qaeda "diplomat" from Osama bin Laden, Sudan's Hassan al-Bashir, Zimbabwe's Mugabe, Burma's junta.
Okay, so the bit about how Obama is going to talk to al Qaeda is just too fucking stupid to believe. But look at the Bowery Boys that are now considered our enemies. There are seven nations there, of which maybe only two could be considered a legitimate threat in any sense of the term. I take it the Zimbabwe army is not going to defeat the US through their crack strategy of starving. And Burma? Really? We're supposed to worry about fighting Burma right now?
What's important here is that back in the 70s (when that Carter joke actually made sense), there were something like 80 authoritarian regimes, or even just dictatorships, in the world. It really was a much more dangerous world. South America, for instance, was full of dictators. Now, I'm really hard pressed to list 10 in the entire planet. Again, if the trend continues, they will be about as rare as hen's teeth in the future. I'm willing to bet that Cuba, for example, will be a democracy within a decade. Mugabe will probably be dead within that time. Legitimately, the only possible threats on that list are North Korea, which let's be honest, really isn't going to do shit, and Iran, which Bush will probably bomb before he leaves office. Which will, of course, make the situation worse.
Okay, so let's just assume that the Middle East isn't becoming Switzerland any time soon. Nevertheless, it appears that the world is indeed becoming safer, largely due to economic globalization and not at all due to the US bombing shit or rattling sabers.
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