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WB: Losing Ugly
Billmon:
[I]t still makes me nervous, because I’m not nearly as sure as Steele that we’ve put our historical xenophobia — and our ability to rationalize the deaths of brown people who happen to get in our way — behind us. In fact I’m pretty sure we haven’t. Combine that with our modern taste for videogame violence, the more depersonalized the better, and our national refusal to admit that we could ever, ever be the bad guys, and our need for the oil, and its not too hard to imagine the war in the Middle East getting very ugly indeed, in ways that might give Mr. Kurtz a run for his money.
Losing Ugly
good post from Billmon…
Why describe the dominant group – the one with boats, arms, machines and today nukes – in terms of color?
(Not that they are that dominant these days…heh….)
Why stress ethnicity when endless theoreticians have discussed societal organisation, technology, and so on?
White guilt, in mainstream discourse, both conservative and as actually exhibited if in a minor key by progressives like US Democrats does nothing but provide a sort of excuse for ‘loosing’ (see S. Steele), that is, provides false excuses for a hands off policy to emphasise it must be more vigorous.
Take it from me, nobody in the PTB ever speaks in terms of ethnicity except when they are discussing how to get Joe Public on board, or to close his eyes.
It is a fact that in the last 20 years wars, as in one nation attacking another, have been more muted, more subtle, and having a less striking, immediate death toll. Peole suffer because of displacement (soon, some alarming proportion of people in the world will be refugees), economic and infrastructure destruction, long term effects of ammo (DU for example), disease, etc. and generally being screwed over every-which way. Some call it the new colonialism, and that is pretty apt. Others say, we are loosing the war.
The model (ex-Yugo, Haiti, Afgh, Iraq, to mention just those; Russai in a different way) integrates elements of old-style colonialism (total control, brute force, bases, superior arms, puppet Gvmts, etc.), tinges of reformatory zeal, as the old Xtian missionaries manifested (re-construction, health, free market, economic development, all very noble), fitted together with economic control or rather hold-ups (Russian banks, Iraqi oil, Halliburton profits) all the outcome of the use or threat of superior fire power (e.g. Shock and Awe..)
It is a sort of hybrid, composite model, made up of bits and pieces, and designed, in a large part, to be peripheral, that is, people in the West are not to bother their heads, all this has nothing to do with .. whatever Joe Public would consider bad, except for attacks against his countrymen or bungling by is Gvmt. Mafia gone global!
The holding back has nothing to do with guilt or morality, but is partly designed to keep rich democracies on an even keel. The model is in fact an outcome of specialisation: why take more than one needs? Why follow a WW2 model, with its great expenditure and massive deaths? Why not just go for what one wants? Why, then, pay attention to what the Nation State is (or was cracked up to be), or the Geneva conventions, or UN rules? All commercial companies in the world apply that kind of reasoning. Rummy knows all about that…
It is, in effect, war without war. Resource theft covered in free market policies. Bombs planted by under cover contractors to indiscrimately kill soldiers and civilans. The encouragement of civil strife, where different parties may eliminate each other has become a mantra, as it was very succesful in one case, splitting up a minor power into impotent statelets, having no autonomy, with their resources and economy completely taken over by the West.
But it won’t work. Not in the long run.
Posted by: Noisette | May 3 2006 17:54 utc | 11
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