Reed Tryte wrote:
>
>
> >The international community should meet its
> >obligations to the people of Iraq to rebuild the
> >country, to develop democratic institutions based on
> >tolerance and to allow its people access to the
> >benefits derived from its oil wealth.
>
> Uh huh. I'd say the odds of the Bush administration
> making that happen are as high as 1 in 1000. Let's
> roll the dice!
Who is this platonic mystic you are quoting, with his/her vision of a unified agent (the "International Community" over whose actions the left is claimed to exercise some control?
We come here to the kind of situation in which the overall argument of Gould's _Structure of Evolutionary Thought_ can really help. One of the central themes running through the work is an exposition of the ways collectivities can (and _can't) be or act as agents. Some collectivities have a (historical) essence, and function (biologically as what Gould calls "Darwinian individuals") as agents, some do not have such an essence, and cannot be thought of as agentsd. Clearly, at this time, the "International Community" is a merely arbitrary collectivity, which cannot in any way operate as an agent.
The person you are quoting is an extraordinary naif, a fool, or a fucking provocateur.
Carrol
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