The unilateralist fantasy (which I once described as the kind of internationalism that even an isolationist could love) has collided with global reality — one part economic integration, one part political disintegration, shaken and stirred. And reality has won, tying the colossus down almost as tightly as the Lilliputians did Gulliver.
Now the question is: What can Gulliver do about it? Or, even more importantly, what will Gulliver try to do about it?
Back to Main
October 15, 2005
WB: Hogtied
Comments
Seeing that they’ve been so successful, I’m counting on them to burn one more thing before the flash has left the pan — And that would be, one Republican party, well done — As in burnt wennie.
Posted by: anna missed | Oct 15 2005 7:05 utc | 1
Agree with everything in the post except the part about pre-emptive war being off the table.
Never underestimate the insanity of these people:
As it steps up pressure on Damascus, the US is actively seeking an alternative who would take over from President Bashar al-Assad, according to sources close to the Bush administration. Washington has consulted its allies in an inter-agency search co-ordinated by Stephen Hadley, the president’s national security adviser. The US is also said to be considering military strikes on the Syrian border in response to its alleged support for Iraqi insurgents. “They are tasking inside and outside the administration with finding an alternative. They would like to find someone to give them a soft landing,” said a former official who asked not to be named. “They would probably accept a military figure but it would be very hard to identify someone to step in and work with the US.”
That was written before the murder/suicide of the interior minister, so it looks like we lost one candidate. But with our Air Force untouched, we can still create a lot of chaos. 3 years is a long time.
Posted by: Vin Carreo | Oct 15 2005 7:38 utc | 2
The ground army may be tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I understand the Air Force is still intact; if the domestic hit-parade continues much longer, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see bombing runs begin against Iran and/or Syria. (Not North Korea, cuz, you know, they can fight back…) These attacks won’t help anything, of course, except finally give the chance to test out tactical nukes, and maybe bring the True Believers back to BushCo long enough to get through the next election cycle.
Ouch.
Please don’t bomb anyone else.
Seriously.
Quit bombing. That means you too, bomb-makers. It’s just not cool any more.
There’s a great future in plastics. I mean alternative energy.
Posted by: jonku | Oct 15 2005 7:47 utc | 5
I’ve argued these same points with determined (or just demented) right-wing fantasists and committed (though not in THAT way) Straussians, but I’m not here because I’m feeling truly optimistic that we’ve reached the end of this road – and have never seen it as a road embarked upon in 2000, but much, much earlier. There is still NO significant, popular foreign policy alternative out there. The ideology of empire and of the warfare state, is unopposed at the levels where it matters.
Syria, for instance: It is highly unlikely that we are not running Iraqis inside of Syria. It is almost as unlikely that we are not running them inside of Iran. What you see at any given time is NOT what you get. Malooga said something that bears repeating – that a mess creates opportunities, er, challenges. There are no good options in Iraq, but opportunities aplenty.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 15 2005 7:58 utc | 6
Anyone know anything about a Syrian-Iran joint assistance pact? And probability that Iran would actually intervene on Syria’s behalf, even if asked? (Possibly that’s the NeoNuts hope.)
Posted by: jj | Oct 15 2005 8:10 utc | 7
There is still NO significant, popular foreign policy alternative out there. The ideology of empire and of the warfare state, is unopposed at the levels where it matters.
Agreed Pat. But how may this change? I have no good idea other than maybe an epic loss in some field.
@jj
“Anyone know anything about a Syrian-Iran joint assistance pact?”
This is definitely where paranoic repug fantasy comes up hard against the reality of millenia old Middle Eastern culture. The only thing that Syria and Iran have in common is their prophet has the same (sorta) name.
One mob is Arabic the other Persian. One is Sunni the other is Shia. One has oil the other gets by on the smell of an oily rag. One has an agressively secular state the other has a theocracy.
They hate each other at least as much as both nations hated Saddam’s regime. For exactly the same reasons that the idea that Hussein could support Al Quaeda was ridiculous the concept of Syria and Iran getting it together is laughable.
I wish it weren’t so but these mobs have been fighting each other for thousands of years whereas the blue with Anglos only really goes back a century, so both sides fervently hope that Amerikans will see the light and side with them against the real enemy.
Of course as Billmon pointed out the intervention you’re having when you’re an isolationist tends to make everything turn to shit. Therefore BushCo are too busy pointing the finger at the whole cabal of sand n…..s to recognise that if they sidled up to one they could use them to get rid of the other.
True they’d have to ditch the zionists but both Syria nd Iran are far stronger and more resourceful than Israel could ever be. They wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to run and best of all they have a bit of credibility with the other ME States.
The sort of credibility Israel invaded Lebanon to try and cultivate but their silly ideology prevented them from seeing that they were blowing it and they ended up handing the joint to Syria on a platter.
As long as Arab and Persian speakers are treated as a security risk rather than an asset and the Middle Eastern culture is held in such obvious contempt the US will continue to be the meat in a multilayered sandwich.
I can’t see Syria and Iran joining to fight the US but they will continue to do it independently of each other which given the current administration’s clumsy strategies is probably more lethal for the US than a unified force would be.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 15 2005 8:43 utc | 9
One does have to wonder what the geo-political intention of US activity really adds up to, with reference to the rest of the ME. By nursing along the Shiite asperations in Iraq, while unpredictable in itself, it without a doubt, plays into the hands of Iran. Which, may render all the recent bluster toward Iran as essentially a feint. On one hand, Iran is foggy bottom bad blood, but on the other hand, it represents (& not forgetting its oil reserves) the most developed experiment in democracy in the ME. Then consider that the oil reserves in Saudi Arabia are in the eastern provinces, where the Shiite minority is a majority, and represents the workforce in the oilfields. And lets not forget the neo cons dream of retrabution for 911, of partitioning that country out of its oil fields.So, this little daydream begins with establishing a complicit (puppet) democracy in Iraq, which then would serve as an example for; first the Iranian democratic movement, and second the oppressed Shiite minority in SaudiArabia, thereby taking dibs on three for the price of one. Logical? Sort of. Sane? definitely not.
Posted by: anna missed | Oct 15 2005 10:00 utc | 10
@ Debs
True they’d have to ditch the zionists but both Syria nd Iran are far stronger and more resourceful than Israel could ever be.
I beg to differ. Israel enjoys a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds of weapons, the means to deliver them anywhere in the world (Jerico and/or Shavit missiles complemented by German made submarines armed with nuclear capable modified Harpoon missiles) as well as first rate intelligence services and unparalleled financial capabilities. Moreover it has already demonstrated readiness to use such means as it possesses against any perceived obstacle (e.g. the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty). Not to put too fine a point on the question, Israeli has the means to incinerate every major city in the United States and Western Europe, and has shown that it would not hesitate to move in that direction should such action seem essential to Israeli goals or survival, although the latter is hardly at issue.
Moreover, the mere threat of “irresponsible” use of nuclear weapons can be quite sufficient to obtain significant concessions from its “senior partner”.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Oct 15 2005 10:30 utc | 11
@Hannah:
With friends like this, who needs enemies? Oh, sorry, we’ve made those, too.
Anyway, whatever nightmarish permutations exist at the next series of forks in the road, you can rest assured the Bush administration will not avoid them. After all, who’s going to put on the brakes? The Democrats?
The Bushies are a lame duck administration, so who’s going to hold them accountable at the polls? Is the electorate even paying attention (what with NFL season under way, the World Series approaching, and the fall TV season kicking into ‘high’ gear)?
Darker days ahead, comrades, darker days.
Posted by: Church Secretary | Oct 15 2005 10:49 utc | 12
Initially I was heartened after reading this great post by my favorite drinkmeister. But then I thought about it and nasty reality began to intrude again. Here’s why:
I do not see this as a war against Iraq. This is a war for the control of the oil resources of the middle east. Almost forty years ago Kissenger talked openly about the US consciously setting Iraq and Iran against each other to weaken them both, as a picador sticking his picks into a bull’s shoulders. His war came true. The next battle was our now fifteen year concentration on Iraq. Saddam had to be induced to invade Kuwait by their slant drilling Iraqi oil with complicit American technology and April Glaspie’s assurances. Then they fed the American public with lies (Iraqi brutes were strangling babies in the hospitals, later revealed as a lie told by the undisclosed daughter of Iraq’s ambassador to Kuwait). Next followed Gulf War I, a test run for new weapons and media techniques, after losing the crucial public’s confidence in Vietnam. Billed as a sanitary war featuring smart bombs and high tech weapons, it actually was the most brutal killing of humans since the Nazis, including the infamous slaying of the surendered on “The Highway of Death”, and the burying of live humans, plowed under the desert sand by tanks and backhoes. DU was also employed. I cringe just thinking about the systematic brutality, which in four short days exceeded anything that Lt. Calley ever did in Vietnam. But thanks to the Cult of Schwartzenegger, the PR machine held up just fine. As Bush 41 famously remarked after the shooting down of a civilian Iranian airliner causing over 200 innocent deaths, “I will not apologise for anything that my country does.”
So next, we set up the Shias by luring them into revolt and then allowing Saddam to massacre them. Then we began a 13 year low MEDIA intensity airwar, which involved bombing Iraq almost every single day. We destroyed much of the infrastructure of the country, including water facilities, then set up sanctions which starved to death 1/2 million innocent Iraqi children. Madeline Albright stated that this action was “worth it”, when considered against our goals.
Everyone here knows this history, but it is important to repeat it because it is easy to forget, or look the other way, or underestimate, the sheer criminal, murderous brutality of America’s ruling elite. That is how you get to be the ruling elite, and that is the meaning of the very phrase. This has nothing to do with Bush personally; he was still busy snorting cocaine and drinking when this all began, well, maybe he is still busy. (Actually, and no one else has brought this up, that is a powerless but completely understandable response of anyone who can’t come to grips with the Death Machine. Well I guess he “grew up”, became a man, whatever.) But my point is that the objective of controlling the oil of the middle east is universally agreed upon by the elite and their planners. Not just the Repubs, but Albright, Zbiggie, and Holbrooke, too. As Senator Biden has said, “. . . once we decided to focus on Iraq, we went to war too soon.” Well, as examined above, we’ve been focused on Iraq for a long time, but let’s note, this is only a questioning of stategy, not objectives.
This has been a recounting of the first two battles in “The War For Control of Middle East Oil.” We all know the recent history of our illegal invasion of Iraq: this history comprises what historians, if there are any left, will someday refer to as the third battle in a single long vicious war of attrition. Billmon is right, we are losing the third battle. But let’s not, as Juan Cole and Helena Cobban did two weeks ago in their debate about withdrawal from Iraq, confuse strategy with objectives. The objective is clear and the reason self-evident. Does anyone think that America can continue as the global hegemon without control of the oil? Chomsky, himself, made this point over two years ago. It is unthinkable that the US will relinquish its hold upon the spigot without the US also losing its global preeminence, and that will take a string of unfathomable disasters which we haven’t even begun to ponder.
O.K., so we agree that we are losing the third battle. What the elite are rightly saying is that we should cut our losses from this battle–what form that takes is up for discussion. But now, as opponents of empire, which I am, we must envision what the fourth battle will look like.
As I posted at the end of Plame thread I , John Perkins, in his book “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”, basically lays out the tools of the trade, that is, the panoply of options we have at our disposal. War, tying down the Army, clearly is not working. In yesterday’s comments section of “Today in Iraq”, ThePaper puts forth the idea that the new strategy may be to reform the Middle East by cleaving off the oil-rich Shiite provinces of Iran and Saudi Arabia and joining them with the new Iraqi province of Sumer, esentially the oil-rich Shiite south, under a friendly puppet regime. Admittedly, this is a long term project, and the odds are longer than they would like, but this is an example of why the elite do not see the game as lost at all. Remember, they have already informed us that this will be a minimum of a ten to twenty year war. (It has to last until the Chinese are strong enough to become the official enemy.)
Others still see a soft coup in Syria as the next viable option. Lord knows that they have backed Syria up against the same wall they had Saddam against–making concesion after concesion to stave off invasion, all to no avail. I’m sure they also have other plans and options up their sleeves.
So yes, they are hogtied now. But let’s not lose track of the scope of the battle that they, the elite of both parties, see themselves as engaged in. Because only by doing so can we guess their next move and work to counteract it. And let’s not celebrate too quickly. Because the only thing that will stop this Leviathan is the loss of global hegemony. And for those of us who still live in this fascist homeland, what that would entail in death and destruction, not silly little terrorist scares like we have recently seen, but real horror beyond imagination, is not something even the most ardent opponent of empire could wish for.
Feels strange to end one of Billmon’s article with something else than the usual “damn right!”.
I realize the point of the article wasn’t Chavez, buthe’s mentionned. I’m sure the drive-by remark tone wasn’t intended, but i’d nevertheless like to see spelled out what is so bad about the guy – if you’re not a south-america-is-our-playground type, i mean.
Then the Gulliver metaphor. It wasn’t surprising to see that image in the neocons’ prose. I see it slide easily outside of these circles. M’kay.
Posted by: yabonn | Oct 15 2005 11:28 utc | 15
Great post!
But now you have me thinking non-stop about Vic Morrow in Blackboard Jungle and how his life as a bully comes to a grinding end as the tacit fear-spurred “support” of his classmates falls apart as he systematically reveals himself.
Bush et al are a bunch of self-important and stupid bullies who once thrived on putting fear into people but now are finding themselves exposed and hollow.
Posted by: LaughterintheDark | Oct 15 2005 11:54 utc | 16
Does anyone think that America can continue as the global hegemon without control of the oil?
Yes, I do. We would have the resources to do without that oil. The only problem is that it is still more profitable to the oil companies and others in industry to have “their” military control the oil for them. If the oil companies had to pay for their own protection we would not be in this mess.
This is a direct result of quarter to quarter management versus long range coordinated strategy.
Malooga, that is a very nice listing of events leading up to where we are now.
Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 15 2005 11:55 utc | 17
Iraq is lost. The war by any definition is lost. That is the message of the polls. America loves winning a war but cannot abide losing one.
In my somewhat crackpot conception scandals are a sort of political expression of cultural dissatisfaction with political leaders and nothing brings dissatisfaction more than losing a war.
Thus Watergate was really about losing Vietnam. Let’s remember Nixon crushed McGovern. Mostly because George promised surrender, thus loss. Check your calander and you will see the day the Paris surrender was signed, oops I mean peace accord was signed, was the day Watergate got legs.
Nothing will save Iraq so nothing will save Bush. It’s over for him. For The Party I am not so sure what the outcome will be. They could well keep congress next year. They might take the White House again but it will be someone who has no Bush attachments. The dynasty is over.
There is the little question of if Jr. will go all Armogeddon as a result. Within days I think his power to do so will be curtailed. The ‘adults’ will take over, whoever they are. Let’s just say if Bush orders a bombing of say Iran the military will just say no.
Posted by: rapier | Oct 15 2005 12:19 utc | 18
Well the no Bush attachments needs a refinement. Powell could advance to president. His act never seems to lose popularity. If by some combination of events Powell becomes VP I can see him winning in 08.
Posted by: rapier | Oct 15 2005 12:27 utc | 19
There was a study done at one time, when energy was cheap (It is still cheap to produce, production costs have not gone up, profits, due to the laws of the market, have skyrocketed.) which found that 1/4 to 1/3 of the cost of oil went towards military protection.
I would love to see a study on what percentage of global oil consumption our military consumes. I’m sure it is over 1%, maybe 2%. This is an educated guess, as I produced 1/15% as jet fuel for the navy during peacetime. In a rational world that is counterproductive.
I’m surprised, dan, that you think we can remain hegemon without control of the world’s oil. What do others think? Have you read The Oil We Eat? It’s online and worth it. Also an audio version for those who want to share it at radio4all.net.
Ah, Vic Morrow… As a young jingoistic kid I loved watching him in “Combat.” I have no idea what I’d think of that now.
it is important to repeat it because it is easy to forget, or look the other way, or underestimate, the sheer criminal, murderous brutality of America’s ruling elite
This made me think of Ross Perot withdrawing after his family was threatened. Or is that just an urban legend? In any case, I think the point about Amercian electorate being amused and morally braindead is correct.
Anyone have a plan to revitalize the US?
Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Oct 15 2005 12:35 utc | 21
Superb post, and excellent comments. Inciteful comments, and I did not mispell that.
The borders of the current nations of the Middle East are entirely fungible, from the perspective of our elitists. From the perspective of politics and war conducted over a generation, from an armchair.
The bulk of the remaining oil on Earth is in one gigantic, round pool under:
Iraq south of Baghdad,
plus a bit of Kuwait where it borders Iraq,
plus northeaster Saudi Arabia where it borders Iraq,
plus southeastern where it touches Iraq.
Draw a big round circle around this pool of oil, carving out the precious bits of five nations, call it the Democratic Republic of Sumeria, and kick everybody out.
And all the people who matter can be rich and happy for ever and ever!
What will turn our ruling money-n-military machine from the purusit of world hegemony to living “within our means within this world” is perfectly obvious:
take away their money and military budget. Make it small enough to drown in a bathtub.
Only two things can cause that — a wholesale revolt of the taxpayers in the form of national strikes, boycotts, mass demonstrations, riots.
Or, complete economic collapse. Which will cause all the above.
Posted by: Antifa | Oct 15 2005 13:00 utc | 22
I don’t believe there is a plan that can be presented as “US foreign policy.”
In so far as there is a unifying motivation in Washington, it’s “not to be blamed for the mess.”
However, it may be worthwhile thinking about the existence of a parallel military government, with who knows who in charge. It sure doesn’t seem to me that Rumsfeld responds in any clear way to direction from anyone.
Posted by: cc | Oct 15 2005 13:55 utc | 23
Agreed Pat. But how may this change? I have no good idea other than maybe an epic loss in some field.
As Billmon has eloquently pointed out the wheels have already fallen off the neocons’ foreign policy fantasy. That fantasy was predicated on assumptions about American power that have proven wildly unrealistic, a fact driven home by the abject failure of 140 000 American troops, backed by a $420 billion defence budget, to defeat what the Pentagon maintains is no more than 20 000 poorly armed insurgents.
Given the unfolding disaster in Iraq, the finally reckoning for which is still to come, even the neocons must have some conception of the dimensions of their miscalculations. Certainly there has been a noticeable change in their rhetoric: the jingoistic unilateralism, the obnoxious demands that other countries accept the rightness and inevitability of subordinating their own interests to America’s, the attempt to reduce former allies -and I use the word “former” deliberately here- to the status of American satellites, the certainty, based on equal parts ignorance and hubris, that the 21st century was destined to be the century of global American hegemony, requiring only an effort of political will to conjure it into existence -all of these brash dreams have come to grief on the shoals of Iraq.
Right now the neocons would crawl over their own grandmothers for an exit strategy that would allow them to escape Iraq with at least a shred of their political capital intact. That hope however rests on the increasingly slender chance that Iraq will not implode and the neocons will not be left holding the bag for the America’s most humiliating foreign policy fiasco since the fall of Saigon.
Posted by: Lexington | Oct 15 2005 13:58 utc | 24
good point anita.
but I fell compelled to add that the brain dead neo cons failed to note that the Shia are the majority in that area and any DR of Sumeria will be allied with Iran.
Posted by: polimorph | Oct 15 2005 14:01 utc | 25
Melvin R. Laird, SecDef under Nixon has a lengthy piece in Foreign Affairs: Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam. I have not read it yet further than the first page. But there is already this:
Those who wallow in such Vietnam angst would have us be not only reticent to help the rest of the world, but ashamed of our ability to do so and doubtful of the value of spreading democracy and of the superiority of freedom itself. They join their voices with those who claim that the current war is “all about oil,” as though the loss of that oil were not enough of a global security threat to merit any U.S. military intervention and especially not “another Vietnam.”
“any U.S. military intervention” –
The idiocity in this thinking is first:
– loss of oil
There will be no “loss of oil” whatever local guys rule in ME. Oil is all they have and they need to sell it. When they raise the price we will buy less and supply/demand/price will find a balance.
Oil can be “lost” when someone from outside the ME is stupid enough to make so much trouble that nobody is able to produce there.
second:
– global security thread
There is no “global” security thread. The “globe” at least has not agreed that there is one. Is only U.S. elite arrogance to percieve such a thing as “global” and use that to justify their very local interests.
—
On the question on what it will take for the U.S.to loose global hegiomony I think that there would have to be psychological change within the U.S. population. That doesn´t need a war, an economic depression like in the 20’s could well achieve that.
The chance for that are not yet high, but increase day by day. So there is your hope.
Would you like something for the weekend, sir?
Al-Qaeda’s barber arrested in Iraq
Posted by: Sweeny Todd | Oct 15 2005 15:03 utc | 27
I’m very pessimistic. I think the PNAC crowd is still going for total domination of the ME, using air power. The ground is already being laid for attack on Iran – Iran is now said to be “supporting” Shia militants in Basra and providing bomb-making equipment, according to unnamed UK defence sources (and reparroted by UK Minister of Defence John Reid and T Bliar himself). Brit tv has even had homegrown neocon talking head saying if Iran won’t respect Iraq borders, neither will “we” respect theirs.
Condi is in Russia this week, trying to get Putin to back off over support for Iran. Iran has always been considered by the US Right as US-run turf – since 1953 at least. 1979 also looms large as a significant year in US-Iranian relations – and it’s payback time, especially for someone like Michael Ledeen, who learned his trade at the knee of Ollie North. I think the US will do anything to get it back now (if not now, when?), and most certainly because it’s a way of sticking it to the Chinese (who have big oil and gas contracts with Iran).
I don’t see any good outcomes here. I think we’re staring down the barrel (both kinds) of a world war over oil resources.
Only serious, concerted effort by US population to reduce the amount of tax it pays (by wildcat strikes, moving to lower paid job) will restrict the inability of the “warfare state” to function (I understand currently 50% of personal income tax in the US goes direct to military), because I don’t think the Dems would be any different. US genpop must decide to ween itself off oil and associated global adventurism, elites are not going to do it.
Mass bonfires of SUVs, now there’s a thought. Ain’t gonna happen though, is it?
Posted by: Hell and Back | Oct 15 2005 15:28 utc | 28
Ha ha ha, Murdoch’s on board for war against Iran!
The editor of Murdoch UK tabloid The Sun (UK’s biggest selling newspaper) has just written (12 October) an editorial bigging up “oil-hungry Teheran”, I kid you not:
But if oil-hungry Teheran has its way, this is doomed to turn to bloody conflict.
…the prospect of an expansionary and merciless Iran…
The inexorable rise of Iran as a threat to world peace is a bitter lesson in appeasement…
This is the newspaper that most people in Britain read.
Chocks away!
Posted by: Hell Near You Soon | Oct 15 2005 15:55 utc | 29
Hey now, give us about 15-20 years, when the Greediest Generation is in full retirement mode, and you won’t have to worry about spending money for defense–there won’t be any. It’ll all go to the promised entitlements (Medicare, Social Security) we refuse to plan for today. As a lobby, the Pentagon/defense contractors can’t hold a candle to AARP and millions of angry seniors. Of course, between now and then we may run out of oil (“mass bonfires of SUVs”, very well put) and have to live like hobbits anyway…
War with Iran means bombing them. If they cross the border into Iraq to take on out troops we nuke them. This might be considered a plan but I really believe as of now that Bush will be thwarted if he tries it.
It’s time to stop gloating over the show trials of the wars architects, which is what this will be all about.
Think ahead.
Posted by: rapier | Oct 15 2005 16:11 utc | 31
Al-Qaeda’s barber arrested in Iraq
Silly me, I thought they didn’t shave or cut their hair. But I hear they are hot on the trail of their manicurist, stableboy (yes, they all go to little Abdul), plumber (fortunately the robes hide that muslim crack), past life regressionist (who, I hear does a good job, by the way, though he has a little trouble bringing them back!), butcher (no pork sausages), baker (not james, though they do know each other), and candlestick maker, as well as their newspaper delivery boy (they especially love Judy’s columns).
So now we don’t have to worry our precious minds about angering the whole muslim world by our illegal invasion of Iraq, endless killing of civilians, our one-sided support for Israeli apartheid and genocide, and support for India’s occupation of Kashmir.
If only we could find their shoemaker–Richard Reed noted that he had moved after resoling his last pair of smeakers.
Another idea to destroy U.S. global hegemony comes through Zbigniew Brzezinski, no less: George W. Bush’s suicidal statecraft
In a very real sense, during the last four years, the Bush team has thus been dangerously undercutting America’s seemingly secure perch on top of the global totem pole by transforming a manageable, though serious, challenge largely of regional origin into an international debacle.
To be sure, since America is extraordinarily powerful and rich, it can afford, yet for a while, even a policy articulated with rhetorical excess and pursued with historical blindness. But in the process America is likely to become isolated in a hostile world, increasingly vulnerable to terrorist acts and less and less able to exercise a constructive global influence.
My conclusion from Brzezinski description is to argue for a few more years of Bush catastrophies. Those would really take the empire down.
Brzezinski doesn´t agree with me and argues for a bipartisan foreign policy, which would look a bit more mellow, but would not change the general course.
I find it laughable, ala Chavez’s Peak Oil
comment in Spain, that, given the trechant
Liberal premise that Green is Good, and a
plethora of Green.org NFP’s floating their
tree-spike detritus into every US energy
policy debate, that when Katrina slaps down
20% of US oil and gas production, and oil
threatens $60/bbl and gas floats above $15/tcf,
and when Bush actually asks the American
people to cut back on their energy use, the
Green response is overwhelmingly dead-air.
Toto por nada.
That shows me Green is a schtick like any
other, a mail-campaign Liberal think-tank
profit engine, and nothing more. A NE con.
The majority of the world’s people, who
live on $2 a day and don’t live in oil-
exporting states, are facing famine …
buy food, or cooking oil, but not both.
Those US seniors on fixed incomes with no
savings are facing freezing to death …
buy food, and prescription meds, or heating
oil, but not both. The math is inexorable.
While Greens trumpet solar and wind power,
even though commercial programs are well
under way in both of those sectors, anywhere
green power can marginally compete, that is,
with sufficient rebate incentives, BushCo’s
call to cut back energy use fell on deaf ears.
Only a week down time’s highway, I doubt anyone
here even remembers this is a declared national emergency, and we’ve been requested to cut back.
Not cut back if you’re a loyal Repug, but for
*everyone* to cut back in a national emergency.
Yesterday, driving to the store, and stopped at a
traffic signal, I saw an omen more chilling than
any I’ve ever seen in my life. Money, literally,
green notes blowing down the street in the rain,
while cars drove past, unheeding, uncaring, just
more windfalls being blown into the gutter.
Money from heaven, but nobody (in this US) cares!
It’s so much more sexy to chew a political bone.
Posted by: tante aime | Oct 15 2005 16:55 utc | 35
I perceive a glorious near future in which the only organized nation states in the Middle East are Greater Israel and the Democratic Republic of Sumeria, which will sit on the big pool of oil in a two-hundred mile circle around Basra.
Outside of the borders of the DR of Sumeria will live only stray Bedouins, their camels’ hooves slipping on all the glass the nukes left behind.
Posted by: Antifa | Oct 15 2005 17:04 utc | 36
Malooga,
I am certainly no expert in this field and responded that I thought the the US could continue to be a world power without controlling all the world’s oil simply because the day will come that there will be no more oil. I may be wrong here too but I do believe that oil is finite.
I read your linked article and am not shocked. This has been brought up by others especially Deanander and I have seen examples of this utter craziness, the one that really made me pause was the use of dried corn used for fuel in those new furnaces that normally burn wood pellets made of sawdust. Unbelievably corn is cheaper to buy than pellets made of sawdust.
My premise is that we have made this choice to be wasteful because it is something we can do and are encouraged to do all the while providing maximum profit for those who sell oil. Farmers are not making any money in the deal you can be sure of that, look at the price of a bushel of wheat compared to a loaf of bread. One loaf easily costs more than an entire bushel.
That we are on a foolish path I wholeheartedly agree, I also believe that alternatives are not only possible but will soon be necessary. It will not be the first time that humanity has faced a seemingly impossible challenge and I doubt it will be the last.
Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 15 2005 17:09 utc | 37
“My conclusion from Brzezinski description is to argue for a few more years of Bush catastrophies. Those would really take the empire down.”
Did Vietnam take the empire down? As importantly, did it stop the world turning – stop it from spitting out little crises and emergencies into which the empire stepped?
Give us a few years of ‘humanitarian interventions’ to keep the ball rolling. Africa is ripe – the TF is already there. The House of al Saud may suffer a devastating blow, and we’re ready to pick up the pieces.
No one wants to stop playing this game.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 15 2005 17:40 utc | 38
A great big running sore in Mesopotamia – why, that’s good for half a century’s worth of intimate involvement. Think Columbia and the War on Drugs.
SF are being offered six-figure bonuses to re-enlist for six years.
Take the empire down? I don’t think so.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 15 2005 17:52 utc | 39
tante, tante, tante-
There are faux liberal NPR greens like you say, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many, many, sincere committed environmentalists in this country. There are probably several million people who have made conscious choices to consume MUCH less. That might be only one or two percent, but it is something. Again choices are often misleading. One less vacation to Europe or the Carribean saves more oil than 1000 miles of shopping trips. Choosing not to have a child is the single biggest environmental choice one can make. At least faux greens are probably not the ones driving Hummers and 6 wheeled Pickups. But I’m not trying to make judgements.
I believe the green concept was not to celebrate high oil prices for their own sake, as we are facing now, which only hurts the poorest. The concept was to anticipate and institute a redistributive tax when oil was cheap to drive down demand, while distributing the proceeds to the the poor, so they are not hurt, and alternative energy development subsidies.
But there are three major considerations which far outweigh personal efforts:
The first is the corporate media, who shill endlessly for every new geegaw, and puff piece every corrupt billionare, while portraying the few serious conservationists that they cover as troglodyte hippie throwbacks from Woodstock. A reality-based media would be engaged in building interest, and knowledge in conservation and alternative energy. What do I see when I pick up my liberal paper? I see the space that should be used to educate people covering intelligent design in a “thoughtful” manner. There is nothing “thoughtful” about intelligent design–if you want people to understand technology and science, then cover it and teach it. Leave the the x-nuts to freeze their x-nuts off in their churches.
The fact is that the very structure of society is more to blame than individual efforts. The most profligate consumer of a century ago probably had less long-term impact on the environment that the most earnest tree-hugger has now. Because products are different; nothing is formulated with sustainability as an objective. Town centers have sprawled out worse than our waistlines, forcing the use of cars. Etc, etc. We are caught in a destructive cycle where the very industries that are the worst culprits are the most highly rewarded.
And that brings me to my second point, which is more important. A book like Mark Zepezauer’s “Get the Rich Off of Welfare” readily shows how much aid the government gives to the most unsustainable processes and industies. With political support to fight these industies and force this money to be spent on sustainable energy development, insulating houses, basic stuff–this would do far more than Bush asking us to conserve in the tone of an Asperger victim, or Jimmy Carter trouncing around the White House, like Richard Simmons in a sweater –that stuff is set-up to fail. Tax policy has been so mystified by the likes of Norquist, corporations, and the movement conservatives, that people do not understand its proper and salutary effect in regulating and tuning behavior to the needs of society. If five years ago we had taken the tax breaks away from large vehicles and given them to the purchasers of small vehicles, that could be saving us several percent in our oil needs already, as well as helping the poor.
The last point is one made consistently by Noam Chomsky, for instance in his book “People over Profits”, and it is a difficult point. It took me several years of research and thinking before I fully understood and accepted it. And that is the overwhelming role of government in setting industrial development policy; socializing the costs of most major industrial developments of the last century, the development of the internet is a good example, then privatising the profits. When Reagan came to power, he cut the few millions that Carter had allocated to alternative energy development, while allocating billions to Star Wars. Actions like these have serious repercussions, far more than vilifying the actions of individuals. Little Denmark (pop. 5M), is the world leader in wind technology, which already supplies 20% of its electrical needs. Here, “liberal” Senators Kenedy and Kerry are blocking the Cape Wind project, a major test case for all future wind development in this country. We have the wind and sun in the west and mid-west. Thirty years hence the landscape will be dotted with these structures, but we could be halfway there now.
Anyway, my point is that it is a cheap shot to vilify a few people with more good intentions than follow through. We all suffer from that. Real change in government and energy policy is simply hard work and organizing. Lots of it.
@dan,
A world power, yes of course, but the undisputed global hegemon that controlled fully 50% of the world’s capitol after WWII, I don’t think so.
After all what do we produce that is competitive? Our agriculture in the Mid-West is unsustainable. The water table is falling 10 feet every year, and we lose enough topsoil to raise New orleans above sealevel–and make it fertile.
Yes, TRIPS saves our pharmaceutical industry, but that won’t last forever. Other countries will get tired, and angry enough to become terrorists I might add, of seeing their populations die off while we hold the remedies.
The world is moving to Linux and Open Source software.
So I guess we are still left with Hollywood and weapons, a motley pair if ever there was one. But not enough to sustain anything but endless war and pillaging (with a few good movies in between for a break), which is the path we appear to be firmly on. After all, why go to all the problems of making it, when you can just take it?
I think we basically agree on most of this stuff, though.
thanks for responding to tante aime, he/she made me a bit angry as well and I really wonder what the purpose of that slap was. I expect that from some idiot like Limbaugh but not from someone who posts here. What exactly should the Greens have said or done that would have raised their standing in tante aime’s eyes?
as for the other stuff, once the chips are down and the tax revenues stop rolling in that allow an obscene military/industrial complex to grow ever larger I believe there will be a necessary realignment of priorities. 500 billion dollars every year for research and job training instead of being pissed away in DoD would cause miracles in the USA.
I have to keep a little optimism.
Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 15 2005 19:18 utc | 42
The only thing that has not been adequately addressed here in this astounding post and extraordinary comments is the role of the “kings of Judah,” the ancient kingdom of Palestine, otherwise known as:
Is·ra·el
Day One: Wednesday
In a pre-dawn raid, undisclosed numbers of Israeli warplanes, taking off from military airbases in the Negev, destroy Iran’s main nuclear facility at Bushehr. Israel’s armed forces have released no details, but it is believed the planes flew over parts of Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, refueling in mid-air before reaching their target. Military analysts speculate that the planes must have refueled somewhere over Iraq.
During the one-hour raid, Iran claims to have shot down “several” Israeli fighters. Television images show pilots being lynched by furious mobs before Iranian authorities could reach them. The after-effects of the raid shake the Arab and Islamic world. Millions take to the streets demanding immediate action against Israel.
In planning the attack, Israel weighed the threats of Arab and Muslim reaction. The only other nuclear threat, and a possible danger to Israel, is Pakistan. Israel considered striking Pakistan’s nuclear sites, too, but Indian intelligence reports that Pakistan lacks long-distance delivery for its warheads. Bombay is the farthest they can reach. Additional reassurance from American intelligence convinced Israel that as long as Musharraf remains in power, Pakistan does not represent an imminent threat. The decision was made not to hit Pakistan.
Day Two: Thursday
Believing that Israel would never undertake such actions without U.S. approval, or at least a tacit nod from the American administration, Iran retaliates. Thousands of Revolutionary Guards are dispatched across the border into Iraq with orders to inflict as many casualties on American troops as possible. Fierce clashes erupt between coalition forces and Iranians. Within hours, more than 400 U.S. troops are killed, and many more wounded in heavy fighting. Iranian sleeper agents, who have infiltrated Iraq since the downfall of Saddam, urge Iraqi Shi’ites into action. They cut major highways and harass coalition troops, preventing reinforcements from reaching units under attack. Several helicopters are shot down.
Tehran orders the Lebanese Shi’ite movement, Hezbollah, into action against northern Israel. Hezbollah launches scores of rockets and mortars against kibbutzim, towns, and settlements. Israel retaliates. Casualties are high on both sides of the frontier. Tension in the Middle East reaches a boiling point. In Washington, the Cabinet convenes in an emergency session.
Massive demonstrations erupt all over the Arab and Islamic world. Crowds of gigantic proportions take to the streets, ransacking Israeli embassies in Cairo, Amman, and Ankara. American embassies in a number of other cities are burned. With police overwhelmed, the military is called in. Armies open fire, killing hundreds, adding to the outrage.
Day Three: Friday
Following Friday prayers across the Islamic world, crowds incited by fiery sermons in mosques from Casablanca to Karachi take to the streets in the worst protests yet. Government buildings are ransacked, and clashes with security forces result in greater casualties. Martial law is declared, and curfew imposed, but this fails to prevent further mayhem and rioting. Islamist groups call for the overthrow of governments and for immediate military action against Israel.
In Saudi Arabia, Islamist militants engage in open gun battles with security forces in several cities. The whereabouts of the Saudi royal family are unknown. In Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, and a dozen other countries, crowds continue to run amok, demanding war on Israel.
Day Four: Saturday
A longstanding plan to overthrow Musharraf is carried out by senior Pakistani army officers loyal to the Islamic fundamentalists and with close ties to bin Laden. The coup is carried out in utmost secrecy.
Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI–a long-time supporter of the fundamentalists–in agreement with the plotters, takes control of the country’s nuclear arsenal and its codes. Within hours, and before news of the coup leaks out, Pakistan, now run by pro-bin Laden fundamentalists, loads two nuclear weapons aboard executive Lear jets that take off from a remote military airfield, headed for Tel Aviv and Ashdod. Detouring and refueling in east Africa, they approach Israel from the south. The crafts identify themselves as South African. Their tail markings match the given identification.
The two planes with their deadly cargo are flown by suicide pilots who, armed with false flight plans and posing as business executives, follow the flight path given to them by Israeli air traffic control. At the last moment, however, the planes veer away from the airfield, soar into the sky and dive into the outskirts of the two cities, detonating their nuclear devices in the process.
The rest of this scenario can unfold in a number of ways. Take your pick; none are encouraging.
Israel retaliates against Pakistan, killing millions in the process. Arab governments fall. Following days of violence, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt succumb to Islamist rebels who vow open warfare with Israel. The Middle East regresses into war, with the fighting claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. A much-weakened Israel, now struggling for its very survival, deploys more nuclear weapons, targeting multiple Arab capitals. The Middle East is in complete mayhem, as the United States desperately tries to arrange a cease-fire.
Four Day War
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 15 2005 19:25 utc | 43
America’s greatest power over the rest of the world by far is financial. America has designed built and operatates the hyperleveraged hyperspeed financial system.d
Despite the American origin, and the control rooms being here, the system is stateless. In fact one might argue that failed states are the desired condition sought by corporate power. By failed state I mean states unable to provide all the things modern states are supposed to for citizens to improve their daily lives.
In the west corporations have coopted government to a large degree. Asia I can’t catogorize very easily I admit. In the south weak states are outside the interests of corporate power except for resources and common corruption works just as it always did.
In the Middle East I think corporate power was and is agnostic on the neocon adventure. They just want a reliable supply of oil and hopefully a decent ownership share. Failed states certainly advance that goal to a point but anarchy and civil war work against it. So at this point there is a problem. (One of the reasons I think Bush is toast)
In the 70s especially there was a run of post apocolyptic movies envisioning grim cities in semi anarchy overseen by a hyperclass of corporate elites with totalitarian methods. Perhaps I am making a fatal mistake of projecting this fantasy into what I think the future might resemble. However I think the idea was a sound premise based upon the acendency of corporations over government. In some sense I think it is the future.
I can forsee the DJIA at 36,000 and tribes of homeless wandering the land.
Posted by: rapier | Oct 15 2005 19:26 utc | 44
The future is scary,
who knows what it shall harbour,
Too hard to be wary,
rather make poems on Al Quaida’s barber.
rapier-
The sad part is that behind the ramparts, they would still believe they were Americans upholding American values against the barbaric hordes.
In fact one might argue that failed states are the desired condition sought by corporate power.
You are on to something here rapier and it´s not a pretty picture.
BTW – I reagard “tante aime” and the other handels he/she uses like “lash mark” (same IP address) as a troll – just don´t feed it please.
At least that person should learn to post something relevant to a thread or use an OT thread for its purpose.
This thread has been exploring the lunatic possibilities of the repug/neocon backlash when they discover they don’t know what the hell it is they are doing. It is also apocalyptic.
I realise that in saying this I’m giving these lowlife thieves credit for an intelligence that they have exhibited no signs of possessing but altho these apocalyptic feats of destruction upon the people of the Middle East might be cathartic for the neocons , even they must see they are doomed to failure.
The US still has a largely intact and under utilised airforce, and those other large portable weapons platforms; ships, have plenty of available resources and enough gung ho fools ready to carry out the most peverse missions.
The thing is though I don’t know any conflict that has been won by just blowing the shit out of the enemy.
Sure bombs can be useful when used tactically against particular targets that troops on the ground intend to occupy. Without the troops on the ground though bombing/shelling the shit out of people, even with nuclear weapons, just makes them mad. And determined to hang on with their last breath since there’s a fairly good chance that the bombing will have killed whatever the survivors believed was their reason for living.
I guess the Battle of Britain was the first time/place where an agressor attempted to win simply by bombing the enemy into submission. All available troops were off shooting at commies so the germans thought that bombing England to rubble should do the trick.
Ha Ha (altho what happened is not funny in the least). Before the Nazis bombed britain it was conceivable that they could have pushed the brits into some sort of pliant neutrality. Once they had blown the shit outta the place there was no way this was going to end without Berlin being reduced to a pile of rubble. And yes I realise the Brits didn’t do that much of the rubblising and that the Soviets felt exactly the same way after they looked around the rocky wasteland that had been their home.
The thing is though once Britain’s cities were bombed and people’s grand mothers killed, no one cared anymore about empire or anything much in the future bar revenge. Without the blitz the Brits would have been a lot more forceful in persuading the US that helping the Soviets achieve unconditional surrender was a shot in the foot stuff.
Hanoi was the next one I’m aware of and no I haven’t forgotten Japan. Lets not forget that US ground forces were already on the verge of invading Japan when the nukes hit. Without that ground superiority the nukes would have wreaked the same havoc but the Japanese would have taken the opportunuity to bounce back.
So hanoi. Those poor fuckers got more high explosive dropped on them than was flying around the world in 39-45. I didn’t notice them surrendering though or doing anything much other than being very determined.
So lets imagine that the loons hold sway and Iran gets nuked. Large portions of the Iranian armed forces will get destroyed but many more will survive. They will be able to resist the few forces the US and it’s pets may be able to put into Iran.
The Iranians will have all the motivation they need but even the most gung ho of the Amerikan forces will have a seed of doubt about the ethics of what has happened eating away at their morale.
True the US could keep nuking and nuking but we do need to get real here. Keeping journos away from small settlements up on the Syrian border while you kill all males between 16-60 is a simple task in comparison to keeping them out of a whole country. A country which borders other states you don’t control and those states won’t be happy about thermo-nuclear remnants blowing across the border.
The US might succeed in keeping Christiane and Co out but once nuking of humans starts there are a lot of people on this planet who would feel compelled to get into Iran and get the ‘facts’.
So all sorts of people are going to turn up in Iran with their satellite vid phones and DVs. Sure there will be EMP effects but enough horrible ‘put people off their TV dinner’ scenes will make it onto the Vid screens of the planet to make it impossible to sustain the argument for a prolonged blitz.
So Iran will glow green in the night sky and the Seppos show that it is possible for them to be more ‘on the nose’ with the rest of the world than they were before.
The oil still won’t be theirs and the Iraqi troubles will seem like a doddle in comparison to the shitstorm raining down on their heads now. They will be further away from being able to occupy/control the oil basin area than they were before.
Now we’re not dealing with the sharpest knives in the drawer here. The combination of the elevator not making it to the top floor and having Kangaroos loose in the top paddock is not a good one. Even so I still don’t believe that the stringpullers/ moneymen and mainchancers that keep this nasty show on the road could fail to forsee this outcome.
However if we don’t want to see millions more people die we must be careful to ensure this shit with the grandiose delusions doesn’t paint itself into a corner.
There’s part of me that would rejoice seeing these sad sack, fat assed, weekend warriors and their mad plans get the treatment they deserve.
Until BushCo’s merry band of sociopaths are pulled away from the controls we have to make it look like they have an out.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 15 2005 21:49 utc | 48
Excellent points Malooga et al. The only thing I would add is a little caution to the folks who maybe wishing for the destruction of this hegemon. Whereas the Russians went quietly into the night, this culture is bad at dealing with defeat. They have a habit of killing everything in sight when they want something, ask the indians. This is a truck full of high explosives out of control on a bridge. If you destroy the truck you’ll take out the bridge with it. You have to take control, slowly apply the brakes, and then pull over. Or else we’re all toast!
Question: Dean seems to have kept a lot of progressives in the Democratic party. What techniques are likely to be used to sideline him and his cadre? I am open to the possibility that Dean maybe a complete fake himself but I have little evidence to support that suspicion yet.
Max
Posted by: Max Andersen | Oct 15 2005 21:49 utc | 49
@Debs: Good points about Iran. This exactly why I think we are not going to go after Iran full tilt yet. Its the same analogy with torture, you want the victim alive to feel the pain, he may ask you to kill him but that would be futile. We need the regiem in Iran alive. We’ll inflict enough pain for them to come around. Remember Bush is not the brain behind this regiem its the corporations. Its hard to put oil wells on the land that was just nuked a year ago. I would bet on destabilization by stirring up the Arabs in Iran, the MK idiots, left over cronies from the Pehlavi days etc. Starting a psudo-religious warm (not hot) war with Saudi Arabia will certainley drain the Iranian resources and further weaken the regiem. The pressure being applied on Syria is starting the make it to the papers but our operations in Iran seem to be off limits to the media yet. Then their is the chaos theory. You want manageable chaos, nuking Iran is a sure bet to throw the whole region, including central Asia, into uncontrolable chaos. Watch for a slow boil on Iran and Syria…
Max
Posted by: Max Andersen | Oct 15 2005 22:05 utc | 50
Iraq was supposed to be the probable final nail in the coffin for the loss of Vietnam. From Grenda on this same crew has been fighting to erase that stain.
Instead of course they have manufactured another loss. This one much more serious for muscular foereign policy conservatives. With Vietnam the accepted stories told by them attributed the defeat to polticians, the press, liberals. We would have won except for them is the belief written in stone on their ideological chruches.
Now there is nobody else to blame. They lost it all by themselves.
Not that we are off the hook in future as to muscular military based war prone foreign policy. One has to assume that since they can gain no adantage in blaming others they will be driven to erase the loss by putting one in the win column as soon as possible.
Posted by: rapier | Oct 15 2005 22:23 utc | 51
Yikers, fellow Barflies! I just got in after a delightful fall day…Not even sure if I can read this thread, but it looks as though I should try.
Is anyone else feeling that this fall is particularly bittersweet?
@Pat, is yr. return to posting due to a new supply of time in yr. life, heightened axiety @this historical moment…or an assignment perhaps?? 🙂
Posted by: jj | Oct 15 2005 23:10 utc | 52
“Now there is nobody else to blame. They lost it all by themselves.”
Lost? Lost what?
You don’t read right-wing commentary, do you?
Posted by: Pat | Oct 15 2005 23:23 utc | 53
You don’t read right-wing commentary, do you?
Not very often, who would you recommend?
Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 15 2005 23:31 utc | 54
“Pat, is yr. return to posting due to a new supply of time in yr. life, heightened axiety @this historical moment…or an assignment perhaps?? :)”
Frustration and disgust, jj.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 15 2005 23:32 utc | 55
As I argued far more cogently above, regardless of what the right or the left say, this is nothing but a little bump in the road, to the elite. Have any planners heads fallen?
Well, dan, let’s see…
Austin Bay
Belmont Club
Black Five
Bill Roggio
Dan Darling
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Victor Davis Hanson
Bill Kristol
Cliff May
John Podhoretz
And the legion of like-minded followers.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 16 2005 0:02 utc | 57
Nice summary of events.
Now, where is the competitive American product?
Hint: Oil interests did not fly jetliners into buildings in new york and washington an fall short in pennsylvania due to some americans with cell phones who figured things out and unfortunately were not in charge of the belated government response.
Partisan non sense from the past and Chomsky bullshit is Did Not Play At Own Request bullshit, unless, oil is somehow responsibel for Chomsky and Nader selling their bullshit and the followers who want to buy it.
When those who know better start working on an American based alternative to the current cronies in power, then, American foreign policy will fundamentally change.
While those living in the past insist on center stage for their own catchcism of American sins as the appropriate response to the take over of the American government by shallow, incompetent, jack asses, odds in favor of the shallow, incompetent, jackasses, skyrocket.
So what do you want? The comfort of your own foolish parochialsim, or, a change that is gonna come? It is your choice, not Oils.
Posted by: razor | Oct 16 2005 0:35 utc | 58
“Instead of course they have manufactured another loss. This one much more serious for muscular foereign policy conservatives. With Vietnam the accepted stories told by them attributed the defeat to polticians, the press, liberals. We would have won except for them is the belief written in stone on their ideological chruches.”
@ rapier It was a while ago but at the time I don’t remember anyone considering the Vietnam defeat to be anything other than the fault of the war mongers who started it.
The whole revisionist ‘lets blame the left’ thing didn’t really take off until Reagan and yes probably Grenada.
This is why the rest of humanity has to carefully peel back the skin on the surface of the scum this time.
Whatever is said at the time when the invaders get chased outta Iraq with tails between their legs, may not be how people are persuaded to see it in future.
But we also have to be mindful that if these fragile macho egos are overtly humilated, they won’t just take their ball and go home. They’ll smash up the party and the people at it having all the fun.
Not because its the right thing to do but because its the wrong thing to do and feels great.
After Vietnam enough of the militarists managed to swallow their pride and not try and defend positions on issues that were too fresh in the public’s mind to lie about.
This time the rest of us need to let these disgusting pieces of dogshit feel that all is not lost while we document every criminal act and bad decision.
But we don’t hit them all with it at once. If we do we’ll have no powder in the horn when these low life scum plot their rejuvenation.
Only if these poor excuses for sentient beings realise that trying to rehabilitate themselves could result in the public humiliation and punishment they avoided before, will they decide discretion is the better part of valour and stop stirring the pot.
Yep doing it this way will hurt and it would be nice to see them held accountable for the mess they created. But we need to worry about the living cause the dead are just that, dead.
So we need to do the utmost to prevent a resurgence so that there aren’t more deaths.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 16 2005 0:59 utc | 59
@Pat
A great big running sore in Mesopotamia – why, that’s good for half a century’s worth of intimate involvement. Think Columbia and the War on Drugs.
SF are being offered six-figure bonuses to re-enlist for six years.
Take the empire down? I don’t think so.
The situations in Columbia and Iraq are hardly comparable.
Columbia is a drug interdiction / counterinsurgency operation involving comparatively tiny commitments of American forces and resources in support a friendly regime. At the current level of intensity American involvement in Columbia is, barring major developments, probably sustainable indefinately.
Iraq is an attempt to jump start a political revolution in the Middle East and validate sweeping claims to American preeminence and has been backed by the full might of the American armed forces and a massive infusion of American wealth. The cost of American intervention coupled with the lack of meaningful progress toward any objective that could legitimately be portrayed as in the national interest means that the will to remain in Iraq will continue to erode inexorably until the cost in politically unsustainable. Bush’s polling numbers tell the story.
Moreover, the failure in Iraq will likely discredit similar efforts against countries like Iran in the foreseeable future. That does not however exclude a return to the Reagan era strategy of targetting 10th rate opponents like Grenada and Nicaragua to boost national self esteem, as rapier suggested.
Posted by: Lexington | Oct 16 2005 1:02 utc | 60
@razor
“Chomsky bullshit is Did Not Play At Own Request bullshit” What does this mean?
“Chomsky and Nader selling their bullshit”
You don’t have to like or agree with Chomsky or Nader, but at this bar you are required to criticize the man’s program or analysis, not name smear: there are plenty of other places where people are thrilled to waste their time throwing food.
I won’t even touch what you said about 9-11. But I will say that you sound like one of the trolls on “Today in Iraq” who has all the answers but leaves it to us to implement them.
“Hint: Oil interests did not fly jetliners into buildings in new york and washington an fall short in pennsylvania due to some americans with cell phones who figured things out and unfortunately were not in charge of the belated government response.”
There’s none so blind as those who will not see. US attempts to control the oil resources of the world and recast the ME into an image that they considered ‘suitable’ is exactly what got airliners flying into buildings.
Apart from the nonsense which insinuates that this act of terrorism was somehow different than all the others that humans around the world have had inflicted on them. Many times by US forces, the ridiculous train of logic that tries to argue that the inavsion of Iraq is a rational outcome of some middle class Saudi and Egyptian kids disliking being called sand niggers is so fucking stupid it takes my breath away.
If that is the best the ‘competing product’ can do then the end is indeed nigh.
The only parochialism we ever seem to run into on this debate is when stupid jingoistic lickspittles see constructive critiques of the current corrupt regimes as a personal attck on their fragile flower of a ‘culture’.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 16 2005 1:21 utc | 62
“Columbia is a drug interdiction / counterinsurgency operation involving comparatively tiny commitments of American forces and resources in support a friendly regime. At the current level of intensity American involvement in Columbia is, barring major developments, probably sustainable indefinately.”
Comparatively tiny commitments is what we’ll work our way toward, in a country that now promises to be just as patchwork as Columbia. No SOFA, but a SOMA, and sustainable for as long as whomever is in power thinks it’s a necessary evil.
Remember how f-in tired Americans were of the interventions, open-ended military commitments and nation-building of the 90’s? How long did it take them to get over it, to forget it? Soon we can swing back to the 90’s, drop the straightforward bellicosity and cringe-inducing grandiosity, and get in touch once again with our ‘humanitarian’ side. It’s all good. It keeps things humming along, the set-up running – until next time.
What good’s this military you’re always talking about if you can’t use it, right?
Posted by: Pat | Oct 16 2005 1:39 utc | 63
And the War on Terror will be just as long-lived – and about as conclusive – as the War on Drugs has been.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 16 2005 1:50 utc | 64
@Lexington-
The situations in Columbia and Iraq are hardly comparable.
Militarily yes.
Columbia is a drug interdiction / counterinsurgency operation
However here you are very wrong, just parroting American gov’t propaganda. More trade unionists than the rest of the world combined are murdered in Columbia. They are not accidentally caught in the crossfire. Colombia is the frontline of the battle for the neo-con agenda–soon to be coming to a city near you–in South America.
From: Colombia: The FARC and the Trade Unions
Colombia could best be described as a “death squad democracy,” in which the electoral facade provides a political cover for a murderous regime….The Government’s free market policies have devastated the economy. Foreign imports, low prices for primary commodities and the destruction of peasant livelihoods via fumigation have sent Colombia’s economy into its worst economic recession in the last 70 years. The regime floats on foreign loans and rules by force. Its economic program is designed by U.S. and EU bankers and the IMF. Its military policies are dictated by the Pentagon and implemented by the local generals and mercenary U.S. helicopter pilots. There’s much more. I spent time in Colombia in the late 70’s. Its situation is comparable to Iraq: A relatively prosperous, almost second world, country with a sizeable educated middle class which has been methodically and brutally driven back until it is now in about the same condition as New Orleans. Whoops. My bad, wrong analogy there. But you get the point.
The history of South America is complex and the roots of its suffering are deep. But here are two clues: 1) In 1920 Buenos Aires and Argentina had a higher standard of living than Paris and France.
2) A US based NGO, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) calculates US “dumping” (the selling of products below the cost of production) of crops as 57% below the cost of production for cotton from 1990-2001, 30% below the cost for corn and 40% below the cost for wheat . The mass quantities of these crops distributed by powerful US agribusinesses in turn put local farmers in developing countries out of business because they can no longer compete with the cheap imports from the US.
Drugs are not grown, indeed the very concept of an “export” economy does not exist, until the indigenous economic structures of life are destroyed.
One more point while I am ranting on about South America. During the early ’80’s, when there was a newspaper that people with a straight face called “The New York Times”, I followed their entire coverage, from soup-to-nuts, of the Falklands War. And it was the same propaganda crap coverage we are complaining about now in Iraq: Endless breathless stories on the shiny new weapons, lack of civilian casualties, battle coverage which later proved misleading or lies, military technology and tactics; cloying patriotic jingoism from the U.K., “balanced” by cloying patriotic jingoism from Argentina; and human interest stories about how the Falkland Islanders love the Brits (They don’t, they hate them as much as they hate the Argentines). It is really like they took a survey a long time ago, figured out what people want to hear to sell a war, and the formula has changed precious little since.
Lots of stories about sheep. But, most telling, is what was not covered at all. Like the fact that the Falklands rank among the top 5 of all countries worldwide in oil reserves, or that they possess one of the most fertile, least depleted fisheries in the world. But one would NEVER go to war for petty pecuniary reasons like that–it was to preserve the “freedom” of the Falkland Islanders!
Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose
From Debsisdead 8:59, speaking of “these low-life scum”:
“…will they decide discretion is the better part of valour and stop stirring the pot.”
I strongly suspect that the scum have no discretion at all and can never stop stirring the pot. They been at it for centuries if not millenia, and are getting all excited at the appearance of recent success. Besides there is a looming deadline and they can’t fuck around any more. It is do it now or die trying.
I’m saying, don’t quit or give up, but also don’t expect these scum to back off in the face of exposure or defeat. Some may be sacrificed but as before they will rise again. Look back at the record of Rummy or Negroponte or any number of the known reptiles; they arise from the slime again and again. Oliver North ran for the Senate in Virginia soon after being pardoned by poppy Bush I think it was, and he actually drew a lot of votes, gave Robb the incumbent quite a scare.
Being scum doesn’t bother em a bit, nor many of the electorate.
Posted by: rapt | Oct 16 2005 3:32 utc | 67
But how may this change? I have no good idea other than maybe an epic loss in some field.
Posted by: b | Oct 15, 2005 4:41:11 AM | #
The empire relies upon the honest and the earnest as well as the dissembling, cynical, and power-lusting. You bring around the former, without which it cannot function. You make inroads there, or not at all.
There is no substitute for a competing and coherent foreign policy.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 16 2005 3:50 utc | 68
Montessori said be careful what you put into a head because there’s a hell of a time getting it out.
And a hell of a time we have.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 16 2005 4:35 utc | 69
Weren’t the Neocons used to remove Hussein, and now they are being deleted as they’ve served their purpose? Isn’t that what Fitzgerald is being used for?
There are so many factors at work. After 9/11 they were on a magical roll but the wave turns, and now they can’t do anything right. I don’t see how they can come back. They lack fundamental skill.
I’m also thinking that the radical right in the US is no longer useful, thus the Miers nomination. The international set simply wants the global business to sing. N’est-ce pas? So now the Democrats might come in handy to further the agenda, by calming the populace down and keeping them under control. There are huge markets emerging in Asia and a lot of business to be done.
My guess is that the Iran thing is bluff. Nukes don’t make sense. They are not cost effective because of the astronomical maintenance costs, and their limited use makes for a limited market. Once they are really used there will be no market at all. So a country is stuck with unused high maintenace weapons. There are better ways to profit, I would think.
I also think there are some excited people thinking about a political solution to the ME problem. And some of these businessmen probably have already moved beyond oil in anticipation of the next wave of profit.
you guys’s theories about the reshaping of the everloving cradle of civilization are interesting and entertaining.
Posted by: jm | Oct 16 2005 5:31 utc | 70
malooga- the nyt also didn’t dwell too much on how the united states essentially propped up thatcher’s forces and, betraying its rightwing peripheral servants, was forced to alienate its closest ally in the south which had been loyally assisting the cia in central american clandestine operations & still surviving as a model example of the national security state approach to ruling, which the suits in washington favored so much. actually, the u.s. flat sold argentina out,
the Pentagon provided Britain with an “extremely useful little book,” confessed a high British offical, with its evaluation of Argentine military tactics – particularly its submarines – obtained in joint military maneuvers. The Argentine military never imagined that the Pentagon would give it to its “enemies” to use against Argentina.
– clara nieto, masters of war: latin america and u.s. aggression from the cuban revolution through the clinton years
in addition, while the nyt was playing up haig’s dog & pony last-minute-attempt-at-diplomacy roadshow, the united states provided the brits w/ “satellite intel, logistical support and tons of weapons, including 200 Sidewinder missiles.”
High British and United States Officials who played an important part in the conflict confirmed that United States aid to Britain was so broad that to have divulged it would have been shattering, since it would have shown the weakness of Britain’s defense.
…
Without United States help, Great Britain would have been defeated, affirmed United States Secretary of the Navy John Lehmann.
on another note, i see that the islands are hosting the “summit of the americas” meeting this year, next month actually. it’s heartening to see that demonstrators are now forcing the leaders to hold their summits at the remotest locations possible. maybe we’ll eventually find a way to keep them there.
Posted by: b real | Oct 16 2005 5:33 utc | 71
I always thought that the dinosaurs perished because they ate too much. The earth could no longer support them. I miss the brontosaurus, though…. my favorite. It’s just as well, since both of us are vegetarians, we would have been competing for the same food source.
There is an orchestration to it all. Just as the crazy mastodon gave way to the more reasonable elephant. But even he eats an entire tree just as an hors d’hoevre.
These behemoths became oil, fueling the modern day over-consumptive beast. I’ve always thought the oil barons would be following the path of these ancient dinosaurs in some grand scheme, some cosmic connection. I think the time is approaching and they are making the final grab. These graceless motherfuckers lack the natural innocence of animals and none have the beautiful neck of the brontosaurus.
I wonder what they will fuel.
Posted by: jm | Oct 16 2005 7:24 utc | 72
Perhaps, jm, they’ll fuel furnaces, but perhaps nothing.
People discuss the greenhouse effect & global warming, but no one looks at the seas. The inc. of CO2 in atmosphere is causing acidification of the oceans. Don’t know if people realize it or not but the existence of oxygen to breathe isn’t like the existence of say Newton’s Laws. It has to be created by the biosphere. ~2/3rds of it comes from the algae etc. in the oceans. When you read about algae dieoffs & acidification, be very worried.
Most of the rest comes from forests…no need to worry about the plunder of the Amazon to stuff bucks in the pockets of the obscenely rich…it’s just oxygen after all…
Posted by: jj | Oct 16 2005 7:49 utc | 73
thanks for the names Pat, I only was familiar with LGF and Freerepublic, I checked a couple of your’s and they are a cut above those two for sure.
Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 16 2005 9:16 utc | 74
@Debs is dead: Syria was the only Arab country to support Iran during the Iran-Iraq war. (The Syrian Baath Party despised the Iraqi Baath Party.) As far as I know, relations are still pretty good.
@b real: The Summit is going to be in Argentina, not the Falklands. The article you linked to suggests that President Kirchner will raise the question of the Falklands, because his domestic audience will expect him to do so.
Posted by: Gag Halfrunt | Oct 16 2005 10:30 utc | 75
Malooga and Debs is Dead
You are part of the problem. Not the solution.
“Chomsky bullshit is Did Not Play At Own Request bullshit” What does this mean?
Democracy 101. If, your objective is a different American government, then, it is necessary to win some elections by getting the votes. Whoever chooses Chomsky bullshit – which is a descriptive – chooses against getting the votes to win an election, whatever the rationalization for the decision. Did Not Play At Own Request means a player who chose not to go into the game.
And whoever needs reminding about not a dime’s worth of difference asshole Nader and 2000, obviously is not interested in a change coming. No, they are onto more important things, of which “constructive critique” is not one as is patently obvious from the fact they have not and will not and cannot construct anything other than critiques since they insist on positions that alienate the allies they need if they are going to have a prayer of a chance of constructing anything.
Of course, this conceipt needs a bad guy to explain its worthlessness: Oil Did It! Oil flew those airliners!
Contemptible. If the big oil Masters of the World existed outside the world of anime for kids, The Masters would have moles giving these “constructive critiques” to prevent competent opposition. But Trix are for kids.
Posted by: razor | Oct 16 2005 15:33 utc | 76
You’re quite welcome, dan.
I’ve never been to Freeperville, but I know the reputation it has. LGF is…well, not particularly interesting. It’s mainly a news aggregator. Or “news” aggregator.
If you get time, John Robb (both his personal weblog and his website Global Guerrillas) is worth a look. Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis does good strategic analysis (one bad guest editorial I recall, but otherwise otherwise fine) and Defense in the National Interest (d-n-i.net, I believe) offers up something interesting about once every week or two. A recent, thoughtful interview with Martin Van Crevald is there. These might not be your cup of tea, but at least they aren’t the usual cheer-leading.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 16 2005 17:50 utc | 77
though this should go on an open thread, the damage has already been done.
I did look at the links you suggested Pat and am more confused than before. What I expected was some compelling argument from somebody like WF Buckley who would cause me to doubt my anti-war position. Or someone who would convince me that brutal blatant military might was the best way to conduct foreign relations.
Oddly, the links spoke of dissatisfaction with the gummint for how the military people are getting screwed (again) or the foolishness of trying to “win” a war in Iraq. One even mentioned that the best possible outcome for the constitutional referendum in Iraq would be for it to be defeated.
Just what kind of a rightwinger are you? ;>)
once again I offer my thanks for the links, not only is good to know your enemy but one should always try to see all the angles to a story.
Posted by: dan of steele | Oct 16 2005 19:19 utc | 79
If you get time, John Robb (both his personal weblog and his website Global Guerrillas) is worth a look. Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis does good strategic analysis (one bad guest editorial I recall, but otherwise otherwise fine) and Defense in the National Interest (d-n-i.net, I believe)
Daily visits for me Pat 🙂
“Just what kind of a rightwinger are you? ;>)”
Not a very good one.
And yes, it is imperative that you know your enemy.
Posted by: Pat | Oct 16 2005 20:58 utc | 81
If the big oil Masters of the World existed outside the world of anime for kids, The Masters would have moles giving these “constructive critiques” to prevent competent opposition. But Trix are for kids.
Well, yes, in fact they do. The black hats exist and are primairly engaged in spoofing right wingers, to track their offshore money.
Posted by: Wolf DeVoon | Oct 16 2005 21:20 utc | 82
where is the van Creveld article at d-n-i.net, please? I can find nothing more recent than 2004.
Posted by: eftsoons | Oct 16 2005 22:21 utc | 83
Another Friedman piece (13 Oct) from Stratfor:
The geopolical power of the US continues to weaken in the face of failing domestic politics:
“The administration’s political weakness does not seem to be reversing. Should Karl Rove be indicted in the Valerie Plame affair — and at the moment, the rumors in Washington say that he will be — the president will have lost his chief aide, and the administration will have been struck another blow.”
Washington is in the process of switching sides AGAIN:
“Therefore, Washington does not want to see the federal solutions favoring the Shia come into being, nor does it want to see a centralized government dominated by the Shia. Having used the Shia to contain the insurrection in the Sunni regions, the United States now finds itself aligned with the Sunnis and with the former Baath Party.”
The “virtual constitution” could be a calculated response by both allies and enemies of the US in Iraq to “kick the can down the road” until they see who they’ll be dealing with once CheneyCo is gone.
“At the moment, the Iraqi constitutional talks seem to be saying, “Bush is not broken, but we aren’t committing to anything until we see the polls in December.””
Posted by: PeeDee | Oct 16 2005 23:31 utc | 85
thanks for the correction, Gag Halfrunt. i really misread that article. (damn medication!)
Posted by: b real | Oct 17 2005 1:57 utc | 86
@b real-
Thanks for your additions on The Falklands/Las Malvinas, esp. American support of the British.
@razor
Against my better judgement, I will respond once to you:
If, your objective is a different American government, then, it is necessary to win some elections by getting the votes. Whoever chooses Chomsky bullshit – which is a descriptive – chooses against getting the votes to win an election, whatever the rationalization for the decision. And whoever needs reminding about not a dime’s worth of difference asshole Nader and 2000, obviously is not interested in a change coming. No, they are onto more important things, of which “constructive critique” is not one as is patently obvious from the fact they have not and will not and cannot construct anything other than critiques since they insist on positions that alienate the allies they need if they are going to have a prayer of a chance of constructing anything.
I should point out that Chomsky publicly said he was voting for Kerry in ’04.
However, I’m not sure that Gore, or Kerry or Hillary–who I assume has the best chance for the presidency in ’08 at this point–would give us a fundamentally “different American government.” Most of the most heinous laws and actions of Bush are built upon the groundwork of Clinton policies.
To the extent that Bush bungled Iraq, he slowed down the killing machinery of Empire. A dem would not cut the social welfare net as quickly, but if you followed any of the discussions here surrounding the recent German elections, among others, it should be obvious that elite consensus, as expressed in neo-liberal policies, call for the shredding of the safety net throughout the world–at the quickest pace the populace will stand for. This is why I consider the work of Chomsky and Nader, as educators, to be invaluable. Incidentally, I got to spend an evening with Nader last year, interviewing him and then going out and talking off the record. My respect for him increased exponentially–the press lies, distorts and trivializes most of his views and actions.
Nevertheless, I think our viewpoints of the world are fundamentally different. I see some hope in local activism and education, but I don’t see our political duopoly as structurally able to end the corruption or death machine required by the continual expansion of latter stage capitalism. I do not see the current political process as able to address the fundamental concerns necessary to the continuance of human life on this planet. The questions I think about these days are ones like how to design economic models of sustainable controlled shrinkage, rather than growth; and how to reverse the increasing militarization of human response on all levels back to cooperation.
I do not find Hillary’s, or Kerry’s, or Gore’s position on Iraq, or welfare, or abortion to be fundamentally different from Bush’s. Nobody is saying Iraq is a crime and we need to get out and pay reparations; Nobody is saying that a woman has an unequivocal right to control her own body; Nobody is saying that all Americans have the right to food, healthcare and housing. Nobody is discussing Nuclear proliferation or universal healthcare because it is not part of the elite consensus. Hillary’s proposals for healthcare in ’94 amounted to doing for the insurance industies what Cheney has done for Halliburton. Gore is giving great speeches these days, including about the environment, but he did nothing when he was Veep. If he was elected, Holbrooke and Summers would have been no different on war and money than Bush’s cabinet.
It is generally acknowledged that Gore did win the ’00 election, and I have seen sufficient evidence to convince me that Kerry won Ohio in ’04. Until we depoliticize state electoral operations and return to handcounted paper ballots, I do not see much hope for honest elections. I have interviewed Bev Harris of Blackboxvoting.org, her book is free on her website; read it.
Lastly, if you want to “win elections”, then we need to take back the media. Here, I give Gore a lot of credit. I have donated the last year of my life to just this task. The news that people hear on a daily basis effects their views. One small story: I was working renovating a two-family house I own when we invaded Iraq. All the contractors where listening to Limbaugh and Savage and coming in like juiced-up hooligans on steroids every morning saying things like, “We’re gonna bomb those mothaf*ckas back to the stone age, like they deserve!” I made one rule: You can listen to whatever you want on the radio when you work for me, but between the hours of noon and 1 PM we listen to “Democracy Now.” Within several weeks all of the contractors were expressing reservations, actually thinking about issues and their ramifications, and asking questions.
Peak Oil may or may not be here yet, but the end of the age of cheap abundant energy is a reality, not a conspiracy.
Finally, American Empire has ALWAYS had an enemy, an official boogie man; that is how you control people. First it was the Savage red man, now it is the Savage Muslim. Nothing has changed.