Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> loupaulsen at attbi.com wrote:
>
> >Would he say it if it weren't so? OF COURSE HE WOULD SAY IT. This is the man
> >who showed us artists' drawings of Winnebagoes of Death and satellite photos
> >of routine truck traffic.
>
> No that's different. There's no way anything Powell said regarding
> satellite evidence and such could be refuted. Of course it was
> bullshit, but no one was in a position to fact-check him. With a
> vote, he'd be revealed as a liar inside a week. If they thought they
> were going to lose the vote, it'd be best to say nothing, or even
> forget about having the vote and move with the coalition of the
> willing.
>
I've been backing off in the last few days from _any_ of the attempts (including my own) to explain the causes behind the current foreign policy of the Bush administration. We just don't know. (It is an imperialist policy, but to say so is too general to be of any concrete use.) I keep thinking more and more of John Adams's warning never to trust England (generalized to any capitalist state) to act in its own interests. Oil isn't all that useful an explanatory category either. _Of course_ Iraq would not be in the sights of the Bushies were it not an oil state. But while that explains why non-oil states are not the focus it does not explain why a particular oil state is the focus. And while the EU and Japan are the most likely big losers from a U.S. occupation of Iraq, that need not be present in the policy deliberations in Washington.
So if we cannot with any certainty at all know what the administrations strategy and strategic goals are, how can we be so certain about a particular tactic. There are almost certainly a dozen reasons why Powell might be lying, and a dozen why he might be telling the truth.
A perfectly possible scenario (I'm not affirming it, merely speculating). Whether or not the U.S. hegemony _has_ been slipping, some/many ruling class figures _feel_ that it has, and were getting a bit desperate over the last few years, and 9/11 freaked them out, and they really don't know what they are doing but striking out wildly. (No point in arguing against this, since I'm not arguing for it.) That point of departure could/would generate endless freaky actions that were not easily explicable.
So why don't we stick to what we know? We _know_ that it is proper to try to stop this war. We know that what we have been doing is the proper strategy -- we just need to do more of it. And we know that the international opposition to this war is larger, more vocal, more ready to act, than any anti-war movement in human history. And that creates a situation in which it isn't ridiculous to think that we might win. And when winning looks even remotely possible, it is correct for the left to try to win.
So what Dave McReynolds and Lou Paulsen have been saying on different lists these past few days is all we _know_ and all we _need_ to know for the time being. So it's correct to assume that Powell is whistling in the dark. We just need to say no louder.
Carrol
> Doug