It is presidential election season again in the United States. Americans are engaged these days with the Democratic Party caucuses nationwide in order to secure a candidate that can beat incumbent Republican President George W. Bush in November. Many see it as a yearlong process in which special interest groups like multinational energy corporations and the defense industry start pouring their money into their candidate’s campaign funds, having negotiated with him to secure their special interests. Nonetheless, many also believe that this election will be a replay of the 2000 presidential election — in other words, another result too close to call, needing another Supreme Court decision.

With the state of affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan, this US presidential election has not only brought out domestic awareness of the significance of political participation but also awakened dormant voters’ attention and attracted global interest. Domestically, the US voter is mainly concerned with issues relating to Medicare services, improved education, increased job opportunities and general well being. None of this is new. Voters are widely seen as indifferent to foreign policy issues and policies of global relevance. However, since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C., some US voters did begin to question such matters and became more interested in their governments’ involvement abroad.

Today, some Americans are questioning Bush’s doctrine of the pre-emptive strike, the “war on terrorism”, America’s international ambitions and global economic domination — matters that are being pursued with the help of US military forces. Most Americans are anxious about the price they will pay individually as a result of extensive deficits, or by losing family members serving in the armed forces. They are wary of hyped anti-American sentiments, not only in the Middle East and the Islamic world but also in much of the global community. This is why many voters today understand the significance of casting their ballots and the dangers if they do not.

For the rest of the world, this US presidential election also looks important. Since this administration assumed office people in Europe, Asia and Africa have been alert to what they see as American arrogance — in its rejection of the Kyoto agreement, the rejection of the authority of the international criminal court, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s definition of “Old and New Europe” and US manipulation of the United Nations. Many worldwide are angry at persistent hostile propaganda against their countries or religion and with what they feel is meddling with their internal affairs, major oil producing countries not least among them. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, Sudan, Indonesia, Iraq and Afghanistan have experienced these pressures. It so happens that the majorities of them are also Islamic countries.

Crowds the world over have demonstrated against the US foreign policy of intervention and confrontation in securing control of the world economic system in the name of defending freedom and liberating the oppressed. They feel that Islamic and oil producing countries have replaced the Soviet Union and Communism to fill a vacuum left after the end of the Cold War. Only this time, the US is playing the game unilaterally.

Yet in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the US has not succeeded to the extent it believed it would. The invasion and occupation of Iraq, much like the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in 1979, has exacerbated the violence, not contained it. One can only wonder whether the daily attacks the US is encountering in Iraq and the loss of lives can ever be justified.

Against this background, Americans need to think about these questions during this election: Can the US ever justify the war on Iraq and the loss of lives? Will US voters wait until America checkmates itself in Iraq and bear the economic consequences as the Soviet Union did in Afghanistan in 1989? When will ordinary Americans take control of their lives and start questioning what their government has been doing? How would the current events in Iraq and Afghanistan stimulate the average US citizen to exercise the right to vote given to him by the Constitution?

Before casting their votes on election day, US voters would do well to remember the basic moral values in the American Constitution as they were originally put by the Founding Fathers. Values such as freedom, liberty, civil rights and freedom of expression should neither be abused nor exploited by politicians with hidden political agendas to secure benefits for special interests groups and their own economic objectives.

— Dr. Mariam Al-Oraifi is a Saudi academic. She holds a doctorate from Canberra University in Australia.