By George

[QCao009@aol.com]

Philanthropist Under Fire
By A BuzzFlash Interview
March 2, 2004
You probably know George Soros as the wealthy financier that the Bush cartel 
has targeted. In the eyes of the Bush oligarchy, Soros is a dangerous traitor. 
What are Soros' sins? 
Well, he believes in democracy, positive international relations and 
effective strategies to reduce poverty, among other things. All of these concepts are 
considered highly dangerous and subversive to the Bush-Cheney ruling elite. 
What's more, Soros backs up his beliefs with money he earned in the financial 
markets. And now he has committed millions of dollars to defeat George W. 
Bush. That makes him a class traitor to the corporate crony contributors who keep 
the Bush regime afloat. 
Which brings us to "The Bubble of American Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse 
of American Power," a recently released book by none other than George Soros. 
We highly recommend you buy this critical analysis of the Bush cartel's neo-con 
fantasy. An edited extract in "The Guardian" offers an opportunity to preview 
the book. Take for instance this excerpt: 
"And we have been deceived. When he stood for election in 2000, President 
Bush promised a humble foreign policy. I contend that the Bush administration has 
deliberately exploited September 11 to pursue policies that the American 
public would not have otherwise tolerated. The US can lose its dominance only as a 
result of its own mistakes. At present the country is in the process of 
committing such mistakes because it is in the hands of a group of extremists whose 
strong sense of mission is matched only by their false sense of certitude. 
This distorted view postulates that because we are stronger than others, we 
must know better and we must have right on our side. That is where religious 
fundamentalism comes together with market fundamentalism to form the ideology of 
American supremacy."
George Soros has written a book that brings a sane, humane, articulate vision 
to American foreign policy. So the Bush cartel detests Soros for two reasons: 
He is an articulate visionary who makes the neo-cons running the country seem 
like bumbling intellectual pygmies – and because he cares about the needs of 
others more than he cares about the gluttonous appetite of the Bush 
"Pioneers." 



In your book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy," you make the analogy that 
foreign policy under the Bush administration is similar to the bubble dynamics 
of a stock market phenomenon. Can you explain that a bit more? 
George Soros: Stock market bubbles don't grow out of thin air. They have a 
solid basis in reality – but reality as distorted by a misconception. Under 
normal conditions, misconceptions are self-correcting, and the markets tend toward 
some kind of equilibrium. Occasionally, a misconception is reinforced by a 
trend prevailing in reality, and that is when a boom-bust process gets under 
way. Eventually the gap between reality and its false interpretation becomes 
unsustainable, and the bubble bursts. 
In financial markets, the reversal is often catastrophic. For instance, look 
at the Internet bubble. There was a surge of investment. But that proved to be 
overinvestment, without regard for realistic considerations. Investment 
increased rapidly, and then became unsustainable... expectations became 
unattainable. Then the trend reversed. 
Now look at the ideology of American supremacy. It has a solid foundation in 
reality; namely, the United States is the dominant power in the world. The 
current government believes the United States ought to use this dominant position 
to impose its will on the world. That is the misconception. This approach is 
not what made America great. America did not arrive at its dominant position 
by imposing its will on the world. But the confluence of a bunch of ideologues 
in Washington with the September 11 attack allowed this theory to gain 
acceptance and to become the ideology that guided the U.S. response to the terrorist 
attacks. 
It led to the Bush Doctrine, which, as I explain in the book, is based on two 
pillars: maintaining military superiority globally – in every region of the 
world – and the right to take preemptive military action. The Bush Doctrine was 
put to practical test in Iraq, and that's when it went too far. The decision 
to go to war in Iraq represents the lack of – or the suspension of – the 
deliberative, openly debated process that has been at the core of American 
democracy. After Sept. 11, Bush wrapped himself in the flag. He could not be 
criticized without the critic being branded unpatriotic. This lack of political 
process that allowed the administration to go off the rails – demonstrated by its 
attack on Iraq. 
You described the phenomenon of the bubble in the economic markets, 
particularly the stock market, and then the collapse. You indicate this somewhat in 
your book, but could you explain – what is the logical result of the bubble 
approach, the might-makes-right approach now and the Bush Doctrine? What do you 
foresee happening when that bubble collapses? 
George Soros: If the misconception survives the collapse, it is reinforced. 
If it doesn't survive, then a correction ensues. If Bush survives the Iraq 
invasion and is reelected, then the misconceptions that have guided him in the 
first term are reinforced. 
This is why I consider the forthcoming election so important, because if we 
endorse the Bush Doctrine, then we have to accept the consequences, i.e. 
hostility and resentment toward the United States throughout the world. If we reject 
the Bush Doctrine in November, then we can write it off as a temporary 
aberration. 
When you look at the history of the United States, we have had many temporary 
aberrations – the internment of the Japanese Americans in the Second World 
War, the McCarthy era, Watergate, and so on. We went on to greater and better 
things. If we now reject Bush, I think we can resume our place in the world as a 
powerful but peace-loving nation. If we endorse him by giving him another 
four years, then we are losing ourselves to something that I find extremely 
scary. 
I think that we might end up in a permanent state of war, because the war 
against terror – it doesn't need to come to an end. The Bush approach facilitates 
terrorism, re-energizing itself by creating more terrorists. 
You described in the appendix of your book something that's been key to your 
moral center and your political perspective – the "Open Society" concept. And 
there's a sentence here I want to read to you, on page 195. "An open society 
calls itself open to improvement. It is based on the recognition that people 
have divergent views and interests, and that nobody is in possession of the 
ultimate truth." In the short section in which you describe your definition of the 
open society – which again seems essential in your other writings and 
speeches about your view of democracy – you describe the role model of American 
democracy, at least in our opinion, as it should be viewed around the world, and as 
it should be offered to other people. Not imposed upon them, we should note, 
but offered to them, as you propose in this book. 
Why would the Bush administration, which says that it champions democracy, be 
so hostile to you and find you such a threat, when what you articulate at the 
core is the export of a true and voluntary and open democratic concept to 
other countries? 
George Soros: Well, they consider me a threat. Oddly enough, we both 
recognize that America has a special role in the world – that being a powerful nation 
brings with it the responsibilities of leadership. The difference is that the 
supremacists believe that "might is right," and since America is mighty, the 
American way is the only way and the rest of the world must follow. My position 
is that America is great precisely because it is an open society, and an open 
society recognizes that nobody is the ultimate arbiter – and that we may be 
wrong at times, even if we are powerful. We must be open to criticism and 
respect divergent and different views and interests. 
Now we both take our lead from the Declaration of Independence. It starts 
with the statement "We consider these truths to be self-evident." The 
supremacists start from that initial statement, and they believe that they're in 
possession of the ultimate truth, self-evident truth...and a certain set of 
intractable principles that follow. That is a fundamentalist position. 
The open society view is that the freedom and a division of powers, and all 
the democratic institutions are needed exactly because nobody is in possession 
of the ultimate truth. And that leads to the concept of human rights, which is 
alien to the Bush administration. 
Let's look at Iraq and play devil's advocate for a moment. Despite the proven 
lies about why we went in there – specifically, as most recently revealed 
once again by David Kay, the lies about weapons of mass destruction – the Bush 
administration keeps falling back on that it was still right to displace Saddam 
Hussein and allow Iraq to become a democratic country. What is wrong with the 
concept, as the way they followed that through? 
George Soros: This stumps me really. I find the idea that you can introduce 
democracy by military force a very quaint idea. Moreover, if I wanted to choose 
a testing ground for doing it, Iraq would be the last nation I would choose. 
I feel that this is sort of a subterfuge for invading Iraq, where we have 
other motives, and those motives really undermine the effort to promote an open 
society and democracy. 
Now, I'm delighted that Saddam has been toppled, and he has been captured. I 
think that one of the great, unsolved problems of our global political system 
is: How do you deal with the likes of Saddam? In the book, I discuss at length 
what could be done about the Saddams of the world. The invasion of Iraq, 
however, makes it more difficult to solve this problem. 
One of the underlying assumptions that we make at BuzzFlash, and that you 
make in your book, about the might-makes-right theory, is that ultimately, as 
appealing as it may sound to many Americans who say, "well, we have a President 
who's standing up for us because he's going out and shooting the bad guys" and 
so forth, is that it is the wrong strategy. In your book, you bring up a 
concept of constructive intervention. Can you flesh out that concept a little? 
George Soros: Basically, we have certain lopsidedness in our globalized 
world. We have global markets – which make us extremely interdependent – so that 
what goes on within individual countries is of consequence to us all. But our 
political arrangements remain based on the sovereignty of states, a principle 
that rejects intervening in the internal affairs of other countries. 
Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of 
democracy, weak states, internal strife and so on. We do need to intervene, 
to improve political and economic conditions inside countries that have bad 
governments, where people are suffering. 
One way of doing this, without violating sovereignty, is through constructive 
actions – reinforcements and incentives for countries that are moving in the 
right direction, toward an open society, a market economy, et cetera. That is 
what I'm advocating. I'm advocating preventive action of a constructive 
nature. And I would use military force only as the very last resort, when nothing 
else works. 
Now you have become personally engaged in this year's political campaign, 
providing MoveOn.org with funds, for example. Ed Gillespie, Chairman of the 
Republican National Committee, has personally attacked you for doing that, as have 
many other sorts of spokespersons for the Bush administration. Do you think 
they regard you as a betrayer of your class, because you're wealthy and you're 
not siding with the Republicans? 
George Soros: Before I answer that question, I just want to continue a little 
bit on the previous one because - 
Certainly. 
George Soros: In my foundation work, I have been engaged in many of these 
constructive actions, some of which have worked, and some of which haven't. I 
develop this idea of constructive intervention at some length in the book. This 
isn't just word. It's born out of practical experience. 
And you have a large network of foundations related to the open society 
concept. 
George Soros: Right, I discuss this in the book in greater detail. Now, 
coming back to your question about why the Bush administration has targeted me. 
It's in order to discourage me and others from actively opposing the election of 
President Bush. I think that the excuses they offer for their criticisms are 
disingenuous, because I am not doing anything that they are not doing on a 
larger scale. 
What do you mean by that? 
George Soros: I am supporting so-called 527 organizations, especially America 
Coming Together, a voter registration and mobilization effort and the 
MoveOn.org Voter Fund. I didn't create these organizations. They were there. And I 
have contributed to them. The Republicans actually contribute more to 
conservative 527s than I have contributed, even though the Bush administration has a 
huge advantage in collecting direct political contributions with the so-called 
Pioneers and Rangers who bundle $2,000 contributions into $100,000 or $200,000 
packages. The big difference between me and the Pioneers and Rangers is that 
they are looking for access and special consideration for special interests, 
corporate interests mostly. I have no such interests; I'm acting on the basis of 
my support for open society. 
This may be a little redundant, but let's put it this way: Here you are, an 
extremely wealthy American, an immigrant to this country, a model of how 
America's immigrants have enriched the society and helped it grow economically. You 
believe in exporting the concept of democracy. You've put great financial 
wherewithal through your foundations behind the concept of an open society and 
laying the seeds for democracy around the world. You of course believe in 
financial markets and open financial markets as we know it in a capitalist society. 
You believe in entrepreneurship. 
That sounds to me like what many Republicans used to espouse. I mean, that is 
truly what America is supposed to be doing, and yet the Bush administration 
has really perverted all of that. What went wrong somewhere? The Republicans 
see what you're doing – or at least the Bush cartel does – as hostile. And the 
Democratic Party embraces it, the ethos of a democracy that leads by example. 
Why is that such a threat to the current Republican Party leadership? 
George Soros: I think that the Republican Party has been captured by a group 
of extremists who believe that they are in possession of the ultimate truth, 
and who don't believe in the system of democracy as we know it. 
In general, our system of democracy has been based on two parties competing 
for the center. Today, one of the two major parties has been pushed to an 
extremist position and that has shifted the entire discourse very far in their 
direction. This has really brought into question the survival of open society in 
the United States. Now the situation may not be as dire as it sounds, because 
it is in the nature of an open society that it is always endangered. In the 
end, it's up to the electorate to protect our open society, and I am confident 
that that will happen. Since the large majority of people are not extremists, 
they will reject an extremist ideology. 
Focusing on that, what, in the Bush administration extremism, makes them 
reject a person who's done what you've done? You're a person who gives of yourself 
and your fortune toward democracy, the free market system, creativity and 
entrepreneurialism – 99.9 percent of Americans would say that is wonderful; that 
is what America stands for. Why do the extremists in the Bush administration 
say that there's something wrong with that – and something wrong with George 
Soros? You back up what you're fighting for with financial support and give of 
yourself, even though you just get political grief for it. 
George Soros: Yes, but they describe me as some kind of a dangerous 
extremist, which is totally false, and which reflects their ideology, not mine. Let me 
just give one example. They have said that I've called Bush a Nazi. I didn't 
call Bush a Nazi. I wouldn't call Bush a Nazi because I know the difference 
between a totalitarian regime and a democracy. 
You personally fled the Nazis. 
George Soros: Right. This is from personal experience. What I said was that 
when Bush says that those who are not with us are against us, I'm alarmed and 
I'm reminded of the Germans. That is not calling Bush a Nazi. However, the fact 
that they use this to make the accusation is exactly what alarms me about 
them. They have little regard for the truth. 
Thank you, George. 
George Soros: It's been a pleasure. 

Quan