Whoever said that without the war on Afghanistan Al Qaeda would take over Pakistan? Not even the US government and Christopher Hitchens made such an argument.
Besides, Islamists on the brink of power are not just any Islamists but Islamists with Taliban sympathies.
At 10:46 PM -0600 11/7/02, Peter K. wrote:
>Plus, how much power will the Prime Minister, in coalition, have?
The coalition government will be weak and unstable, a condition favorable to those even more radical than Maulana Fazlur Rehman and the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal alliance.
At 10:46 PM -0600 11/7/02, Peter K. wrote:
>Again, Al Qaeda in complete control of the state, with nuclear
>weapons, would have been a nightmare.
With all the instabilities that the US government's endless war has and will continue to cause, Al Qaeda and their ideological brothers will have many chances to exploit them.
At 10:46 PM -0600 11/7/02, Peter K. wrote:
>I'll agree the US should force Israel to accept a Palestinian state
>and help encourage regime change in other Middle Eastern countries
>so that they would be able to democratize and modernize.
Democratization and modernization take more than "regime change." It's not within the powers of the US government to create requisite economic conditions -- good jobs with good wages, investment in secular public education, investment in such economic infrastructure as roads, clean water, etc. -- in the Middle East, Central Asia, and beyond that would foster democratization and modernization. Far from exporting capital, the USA sucks capital out of the rest of the world, retarding economic development.
***** The Rise of Big House Nation: From Reform to Revenge excerpted from the book Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis by Christian Parenti Verso Books, 1999
...The second round of anti-crime repression, which began in the early and mid eighties, was a reaction to a different set of contradictions. With the onslaught of Reaganomic restructuring, rebellion was not a pressing political issue: there were no riots, no Black Panther Party, etc. Instead, increased poverty and the social dislocations of deindustrialization were threats to order. In a broad sense the social breakdown, disorder, and floating populations created by neoliberal economic restructuring had to be managed with something other than social democratic reform. The liberal, ameliorative social control strategies of the war on poverty era (discussed in chapter two) inadvertently empowered working people. This had a deleterious effect on capital's efforts to boost sagging profit margins by gouging workers. In short, redistributive reforms helped throw the Phillips curve out of wake.
Reproducing the business system, and the American social order generally, required containing the poor. Policing and the war on drugs are part of this political triage....
<http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Prison_System/Big_House_Nation_LA.html> *****
The same goes for foreign policy. The US government today doesn't have economic wherewithal to undertake "liberal, ameliorative social control strategies" a la the Marshall Plan; it can only wage war in response to "the social breakdown, disorder, and floating populations" in the Middle East, Central Asia, and elsewhere. -- Yoshie
* Calendar of 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/>