----- Original Message -----
From: "Cian" <co015d5200 at blueyonder.co.uk>
>
> Sorry, you've lost me. Who uses this criteria to assess whether to take an
> action against an adversary? The only person I can think of is Chomsky.
=====================
Seems folks other than NC are using it, why else would Doug find the notion so annoying? I presented the Saudi Arabia counterfactual because I agreed with him, but was misunderstood, alas.
>
> > It also helps debunk the rabid individualism/reification of Saddam as
> > omnipotent.
>
> Who seriously believes Saddam is omnipotent?
======================
>From Today's Guardian:
Iraq: nuclear arms warning Saddam could build nuclear weapon 'within months' if Iraq obtains radioactive material, defence thinktank warns.
We've come to expect such rhetorical drivel from US journalists who've been engaging in extended bouts of idiocy for more than a decade on this issue but now our exports are causing harm it seems......
>
> > That way the argument can be shifted over to the negative
> > contagion/spillover/destabilization effects that may ensue from a
> prolonged
> > and it would be *long* time before the US could exit- presence in the
> region.
>
> I doubt it. Insurrection has been put down easily enough in the past - just
> look at Syria. Saudi Arabia might be a problem, but then the oil's easily
> defensible. Mecca might fall, but so what? It might even be a good thing for
> the US - it would separate the religion from the oil.
==================
We can no more predict the contagion effects in the ME than we can predict next Wednsesday's Dow Jones prices. Your cheapening of the consequences of Mecca's fall is an example of the kind of hubris Muslims deplore in Westerners. Saudi Arabia has the potential of being a big problem in the next decade and the idea of US occupation there ought scare the pants off of everyone.
>
> Al-Quaida probably wouldn't have any problems recruiting though. Still,
> everyone important can afford private jets, right?
>
> Pointing out that this war is the perfect way to lose the "war against
> terror", is probably the best way to proceed. Especially as most people seem
> to half suspect this anyway.
=============== Like I said about a year ago, challenging the very rhetoric of the "war against terror" should remain a goal in the Gramscian positional sense.........
Ian