NP US Elections

[Otto]

Still no votes in Leipzig

US policy now affects every citizen on the planet. So we should all have a
say in who gets to the White House

(...)
"So perhaps it's time to make a modest proposal. If everyone in the world
will be affected by this election, shouldn't everyone in the world have a
vote? Despite Bob Dole, shouldn't the men who want to be president win the
support of Liverpool and Leipzig as well as Louisville and Lexington?

It may sound wacky, but the idea could not be more American. After all, the
country was founded on the notion that human beings must have a say in the
decisions that govern their lives. The rebels' slogan of "No taxation
without representation" endures two centuries later because it speaks about
something larger than the narrow business of raising taxes. It says that
those who pay for a government's actions must have a right to choose the
government that takes them.

Today, people far from America's shores do indeed pay for the consequences
of US actions. The citizens of Iraq are the obvious example, living in a
land where a vile dictatorship was removed only for a military occupation
and unspeakable violence to be unleashed in its place. The would-be voters
of downtown Baghdad might like a say in whether their country would be
better off with US forces gone. Perhaps John Kerry's Monday promise to start
bringing the troops home, beginning next summer, would appeal to them. But
they have no voice."
(...)
Jonathan Freedland, Wednesday September 22, 2004, The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/comment/story/0,14259,1309890,00.html