[lbo-talk] Two Takes

[andie nachgeborenen]

Yes, self-emancipation is really hard. Yes, sometimes it takes decades. Or longer. I wouldn't have made a guess about Iraq barring the war. It wouldn't have surprised me if it would have taken another decade, or anyway till after the old tyrant's death. But, unlike Brad and Luke, I think that in general self-emancipation is the only kind that really works, and I don't in general trust interested outsiders to emancipate others.  In particular I don't trust the US at the best of times, and an administration headed by fundamentalist reactionaries and run by neocon Likudnik zealots (and remember who the original Zealots were!) is not the US at the best of times. We don't have enlightened imperialism here of the sort that reconstructed Germany and Japan after WWII; we don't have the cool, experienced, greedy but knowledgeable gentlemanly imperialism of the Raj, this is a lunatic grab for oil and power by ignorant bigots who only understand the language of force. They have sown the wind. Like as not, others shall reap the whirlwind. jks

Brad DeLong <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:>It is unbelievable how far and how fast Hitch has fallen. One can 
>only imagine what the old Hitch would have made of this dreck. I can 
>dimly imagine a defense of the Iraq war along Luke's (or Brad's) 
>neo-imperialist lines: Yer, the US mission is cynical and 
>imperialist. But its target, however opportunistically chosen, is 
>far worse, and deserving of destruction. The Iraqis, being wogs and 
>all, are incapable of self-emancipation

Self-emancipation is really hard. To believe that the Iraqis could 
have done it by themselves in less than decades is, IMHO, an act of 
self-deception.

Brad DeLong

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