>>I think that Carrol is quite right here. It is simply too
>>early to tell whether imperialism will benefit or suffer
>>in the long term because of 9/11. On the one hand
>>the events of 9/11 themselves can be seen as a
>>blow to imperialism inasmuch as they exposed
>>the vulnerability of the US to terrorist attack. It
>>was certainly a psychological blow to the American
>>populace who have lived in a country that has not known
>>foreign attacks on its soil since 1812, and where
>>prior to 9/11 such attack had seemed to be inconceivable...
>
>I've never met anybody who thought before 911 that a large-scale
>terrorist attack on U.S. soil by foreigners was "inconceivable. " I
>know a lot of people (including me) who thought before 911 that a
>large-scale terrorist attack on U.S. soil by foreigners was highly
>unlikely, because those who might otherwise have launched terrorist
>strikes on the US were deterred from doing so. States and
>para-states keep the terrorist groups they sponsor, harbor, and
>supply on a reasonably tight leash. Our intelligence services are
>good enough to be able to identify with high probability a
>substantial chunk of the sponsors, harborers, and suppliers of a
>large-scale terrorist attack. And the U.S. government is capable of
>swift and massive retaliation against such a sponsoring state or
>para-state. Thus the elementary logic of deterrence seemed to
>suggest that every state and para-state would be trying hard to keep
>their terrorists' leashes short enough to prevent something like the
>911 terror bombing of the World Trade Center.
>
>Of course, it happened: deterrence failed. Deterrence can fail for
>any of five reasons: (1) The terrorists may slip their leash. (2)
>The sponsoring state or para-state may believe that it can evade
>being identified. (3) The sponsoring state or para-state may not
>believe that U.S. retaliation may be massive. (4) The sponsoring
>state or para-state may think that Allah's strong right hand will
>defend them against massive retaliation. (5) The sponsoring state or
>para-state may welcome U.S. retaliation because it has some other,
>deeper plan of which U.S. retaliation is a welcome part.
That terrorists capable of such destruction as 911 must be sponsored by some state(s) appears to be the official justification for the war on Afghanistan, but 911, as well as the bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma & the like, demonstrates that large-scale terrors can be committed by those without state sponsorship. What it takes is requisite skills, discipline (to avoid leaks, infiltrations, unrelated arrests, etc.), determination (to sacrifice one's life, if necessary), and a little funding. Taking flying lessons, manufacturing bombs, creating biological weapons, etc. cost some money but certainly are not beyond the reach of networks of conspirators with no support other than themselves.
Hardt & Negri prophesy in _Empire_ (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2000):
***** A new nomad horde, a new race of barbarians, will arise to invade or evacuate Empire. Nietzsche was oddly prescient of their destiny in the nineteenth century. "Problem: where are the _barbarians_ of the twentieth century? Obviously they will come into view and consolidate themselves only after tremendous socialist crises." [8] We cannot say exactly what Nietzsche foresaw in his lucid delirium, but indeed what recent event could be a stronger example of the power of desertion and exodus, the power of the nomad horde, than the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the entire Soviet bloc? In the desertion from "socialist discipline," savage mobility and mass migration contributed substantially to the collapse of the system....What we need, however, is more. We need a force capable of not only organizing the destructive capacities of the multitude, but also constituting through the desires of the multitude an alternative. The counter-Empire must also be a new global vision, a new way of living in the world....Those who are against, while escaping from the local and particular constraints of their human condition, must also continually attempt to construct a new body and a new life. This is a necessarily violent, barbaric passage, but as Walter Benjamin says, it is a positive barbarism: "Barbarisms? Precisely. We affirm this in order to introduce a new, positive notion of barbarism. What does the poverty of experience oblige the barbarian to do? To begin anew, to begin from the new." The new barbarian "sees nothing permanent. But for this very reason he sees ways everywhere. Where others encounter walls or mountains, there, too, he sees a way. But because he sees a way everywhere, he has to clear things from it everywhere....Because he sees ways everywhere, he always positions himself at crossroads. No moment can know what the next will bring. What exists he reduces to rubble, not for the sake of the rubble, but for that of the way leading through it." [10]
[8] Friedrich Nietzsche, _The Will to Power_, trans. Walter Kaufman and R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Vintage, 1968), p. 465 (no. 868, November 1887 - March 1888) [10] The first passage is from Walter Benjamin, "Erfahrung und Armut," in _Gesammelte Schriften_, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhaussen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972), vol 2, pt. 1, pp. 213-219; quotation p. 215. The second passage is from "The Destructive Character," in _Reflections_, ed. Peter Demetz (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), pp. 302-303.
(pp. 213-215) *****
Hardt & Negri breathlessly write as if we could and should assume that "a new nomad horde, a new race of barbarians" will be be of the Left, but there is no such guarantee in history. Far from anarchists or autonomists of the Left, it turns out to be radical Islamists on the Right that best approximate the description of "a new nomad horde, a new race of barbarians" who contributed to and rose out of "the collapse of the entire Soviet bloc." Here's a "counter-Empire" that feeds, and feeds off, the Empire. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Anti-War Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>