Rove and Wolfowitz's role

Jeet Heer jeet at sturdynet.com
Sun Feb 23 15:54:24 PST 2003


Doug Henwood wrote:

"Much of this is known here, but it is good to have it in one place. And I think it's a useful counter to the FROP/overaccumulation explanations of the anti-Iraq campaign, since it shows the bellicosity emerging from a specific and relatively narrow set of ideological and even electoral interests, and not the guts of capital."

I'm not sure if this is right; the people driving the bellicosity may come from small sub-sets within the Republican policy making elite (evangelical christians, likud-sympathetic zionist), but they've won over a much wider support base both inside and outside their political party, including many erstwhile liberals (see The New Yorker, the Washington Post or the Council of Foreign Relations). Wall Street may not be pushing for the war, but like much of the ruling class, they're willing to go along for the ride. So the question should be why are people like Rove and Wolfowitz pushing for war (we already know the answer pretty much -- they want to teach the Arabs a lesson), but why a broad spectrum of the ruling class is willing to go along with such a reckless and potentially dangerious policy.



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