The US does not care
> > about state sovereignty, human rights, freedom,
> > justice, or democracy, It cares about money and
> power.
> > This should be so obvious here as not to have to
> be
> > said.
>
> You see the US government as a fixed entity that
> doesn't change over time.
Not with respect to the fundamentals. Btw, this is not particularly leftist boilerplate. It's consistent with what political scientists call Realism in International Relations theory, summed up by De Gaulle's quip that nations have no friends, only interests.
> I think it's fluid enough to allow for the
> possibility that the Bush and
> Clinton administrations had different aims in the
> region.
Sure, within the general constraints that both were pursuing money and power in their various way. Justice by their lights? sure, butonly if it didn;t get in the way of money and power. And what they count as just is refracted through the lens of interest. This should be so obvious that it should not have to be said.
Maybe Brad can
> tell me about all of the oil-hungry players in the
> Cliton administration,
> because I haven't heard of them.
>
Cher ami, I do not say that even the Bushies sit around dividing up oil wells. But oil is at the center of Mid East politics, if Brad says otherwise, he's a liar or a fool. My suggestion is that US interests in the region are stratetic and indirect. We do not need the oil to keep ouyr SUVs running. But Europe and Japan do, so power over it is leverage over them. This had been recognized since 1946, when the Us threatened to nuke the USSR to get the Red Army out of Northern Iran.
> > I love utilitarianism. It's based on a lie:
> people are
> > required to believe something that it holds to be
> > false.
>
> You should've said that "I love your variant of
> utilitarianism," because
> there are consequentialists who believe in desserts.
Who was talkinga bout desert? I thought you were denying moral responsibility.
>
> The war against terror is over. All that's left
> now, I think, is
> intelligence and police work.
Now I'm lost. I thought you were defending military action in the war on terror because police work wouldn't work. Now you say what is obviosult false, that the military part is over, and that police work is fine.
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