But something of the crisis will persist...

    And that will be something extremely serious for the "empire in spite of itself," as the United States has frequently been designated. An empire which has seen its reputation, influence and real power in the world crumble over the last eight years. And seen disappear most significantly, the degree of trust its administration and its institutions have always enjoyed, in spite of what people said about them in the darkest hours of the 20th century: those of the bloodiest wars and the worst economic difficulties, of triumphant dictatorships and abysmal monetary devaluations.

    Of all American institutions, the dollar will have been the most respected, whether in the hushed recesses of central banks managing open countries, or under the counter in closed countries where the lower class had no right to meddle with this dollar. So, this greenback, this symbol of the planet's most solid and reliable economy, is now washed out, pared down, trampled upon.

    The idea of uncertainty will - from now on and always - be attached to it.

    This frightening crack in the American financial edifice comes after the failure of its military apparatus, the slow collapse of which insidiously began, one may perhaps consider, in Korea. After the erosion of the United States' scientific and technological hegemony - which, in fact, leaves American students indifferent, while Asian youth gobble up the molecule and the algorithm. And after the great disenchantment with its diplomacy, to the point we see Nicolas Sarkozy's France cheerfully resume the role it has always considered its own since the time of Cardinal de Richelieu!

    The United States' only intact power today remains its culture. But for how much longer? Culture is not a self-sufficient creature that can forever remain in better health than the society that feeds it.

    Perhaps American culture has had the luck to remain almost outside the reach of politics. For it is politics, in particular the politics inflicted on the country for the last eight years, that is the source of the present evils. And those politics, far more than Wall Street's lure for money; or the incompetence of the military apparatus; or the decline of the universities; or the generalized abdication of individual responsibility.

    Last week, in front of the UN General Assembly during his televised address to the nation, we saw a George W. Bush suddenly aged by 10 years. He had the look of someone who staggers, shattered, in a field of ruins.

    He now, inevitably, knows what his place in History will be.

    --------

    Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.