"A coalition partner must do more than just express sympathy," Bush said alongside Chirac. "A coalition partner must perform." And then he added a grim warning for non-performers: "Over time, it's going to be important for nations to know they will be held accountable for inactivity." To whom and for what? He did not elaborate."
(New Statesman November 12th 2001)
'We are in the midst of a 'silent revolution,' in which the unwritten rules that determine the most elementary international logic are changing. Washington scolded German Prime Minister Gerhard Schröder, a democratically elected leader, for maintaining an anti-war stance supported by the large majority of Germans. In Turkey, according to opinion polls, 94 percent of the people are opposed to allowing U.S. troops in their country for the war. Where is democracy here? Those who pose as global defenders of democracy are the ones who are effectively undermining it'.
(Zizek 2003)
'Another stunning example of U.S. double-think was the two-sided pressure it exerted on Serbia in the summer of 2003. U.S. officials demanded that Serbia deliver suspected war criminals to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague (in accordance with the logic of the global empire, which demands transnational judicial institutions); but they also simultaneously pressured Serbia to sign a bilateral treaty obliging it not to deliver to the new International Criminal Court (also in The Hague) any U.S. citizens suspected of war crimes or other crimes against humanity (in accordance with the logic of the nation-state). No wonder the Serb reaction was one of perplexed fury'.
'When Bush said in his January 2003 State of the Union message, "The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity," this apparent burst of humility, in fact, concealed its totalitarian opposite. Every totalitarian leader claims that, in himself, he is nothing at all: His strength is only the strength of the people who stand behind him, whose deepest strivings only he expresses. The catch is, those who oppose the leader by definition not only oppose him, but they also oppose the deepest and noblest strivings of the people. And does the same not hold for Bush's claim? It would have been easier if freedom effectively were to be just the United States' gift to other nations; that way, those who oppose U.S. policies would merely be against the policies of a single nation-state. But if freedom is God's gift to humanity, and the U.S. government sees itself as the chosen instrument for showering this gift on all the nations of the world, then those who oppose U.S. policies are rejecting the noblest gift of God to humanity.
(ibid.)