----- Original Message ----- From: "John Gulick" <jlgulick at sfo.com>
Which goes to show that the
> "war on terrorism" is not simply a "war on terrorism" at all but
tied up
> with the
> usual games of geopolitics and economic imperialism and hegemonism.
I think
> the great mass of the U.S. still thinks this is about retaliation
for Sept
> 11 and
> don't see the bigger picture, which is not to say that they will
oppose U.S.
> foreign policy in significantly greater numbers if they had a better
> command of the
> facts.
>
> John Gulick
===============
For the long haul, the question becomes what institutional channels
need to be created so as to allow a citizenry that did have better
command of the facts to stop elites from engaging in imperial
adventurism. Right now we can all call our congresspersons and the
white house until we're blue in the face. If they heed our calls for
restraint we heave a sigh of relief. If not, all we can do is remember
at the ballot box in the next election cycle. Clearly, this is not
enough given the ability to create amnesia via "the media."
It's easy to say we need a constitutional amendment or convention in order to generate the creation of mechanisms for referenda to restrain imperial factions in the US polity, but how would we go about the task? And what happens if the majority decides that neo-containment policies are different from imperial strategies of the past, even as those policies seek to ameliorate the problems of "blowback"?
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that every working class member etc. despises the policies of the Rumsfeld's and Wolfowitz' of the polity. What happens, if in 2003, a bioweapon is unleashed in, say, Dallas or Paris. What then? Our rush to evade the "we reap what they've sown" argument becomes very problematic and, let's face it the people who strategized and executed 9-11 may be the tip of an iceberg, that while they may prefer to get the Rumsfeld's and Wolfowitz' and the Fortune 500 "brain trust", are prepared to take out northern metropoles until the confidence in democracy is completely undermined. The Westphalian paradigm would *really* come undone precisely because non-state actors can destabilize confidence in States abilities to secure liberty under democratic conditions.
I'm not bringing this up for gloom and doom reasons, but precisely because we can't let worst case scenario thinking be left to the imperial caste. They think about this shit all the time and whether it will allow them ever greater leverage to keep democratic expectations in limbo and liberty to be stuck in Lockean purgatory.
Ian