What is the moral course

Max Sawicky sawicky at bellatlantic.net
Thu Sep 13 09:08:09 PDT 2001


. . . But analysis postponed is analysis denied. Giving in to the war fever will just make it that much more difficult to deal at any point with the underlying problems. . . .

If rejecting war fever is defined as rejecting any sort of military action, then you might as well go fishing. Some fevers can't be stopped. Any stand is a moral exercise (and not necessarily to be rejected for that), not a political one.

On the victimization issue, one insight I heard is the idea that OBL and similar types are not acting because of the negative turn in Israeli policy or the collapse of the peace process, such as it was. They are much more ambitious than that. They are against any peace process at all and any Jewish state. No two-state solutions for them. Without doubt, they are politically bolstered by Israeli policy under Sharon, but it is not what motivates them. I can't say if this is true, but it is persuasive to me. The existence of a Palestinian state would not have precluded what happened this week.

A broader dimension of this that nobody has noted is the WH focus on "coalition," starting with NATO as an anchor. What is in prospect is a new world government (in the form of military-security federation) that explicitly rejects the sovereignty of any nation that doesn't 'join.' In this context, the prospect of a "world war on terrorism" means a new institutional shape in world politics.

mbs



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