"Peter K." wrote:
>
> >
> And speaking of tin ears, I'm still waiting for Carrol
> to answer my question about his theories on the culture war
> war we may or may not be enduring, one that may be
> similar to the Gulf war culture war.
Not a major matter. The Vietnam War sort of dented those bedrocks of popular support for imperialist adventures, the white man's burden and the individual superiority of the Americna Soldier to the Little Yellow Men. The result had been what came to be called the Vietnam Syndrome. What a drag on U.S. freedom of operation in the international arena. A Good War might change that.
So my mild hypothesis was that the Gulf War was only incidentally about direct imperial interests (oil etc) and more fundamentally about maintaining the cultural foundations for the exercise of imperial power. I am a bit sceptical, for instance, that the current war is about an oil pipeline. But I'm not going to argue the point particularly.
Carrol