<HTML> <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px"> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood@panix.com> THE IRAQ WAR: WHERE IS THE TRUE DANGER? by Slavoj Zizek [...]</BLOCKQUOTE> the vicious cycle of the American intervention gets only more complex: the danger is that the very American intervention will contribute to the emergence of what America most fears, a large united anti-American Muslim front. It is the first case of the direct American occupation of a large and key Arab country - how could this not generate universal hatred in reaction? One can already imagine thousands of young people dreaming of becoming suicide bombers, and how that will force the US government to impose a permanent high alert emergency state... However, at this point, one cannot resist a slightly paranoid temptation: what if the people around Bush KNOW this, what if this "collateral damage" is the true aim of the entire operation? What if the TRUE target of the "war on terror" is the American society itself, i.e., the disciplining of its emancipatory excesses? ^^^^^^ CB: Zizek seems to suggest a conspiracy theory here.  Anyway, I think it's likely true to the extent that there have been members of the national security state sitting around thinking how to use 9/11 to further their domestic agenda, not that the "war on terror" was invented whole clothe as a cover for instituting domestic quasi-fascism. So, domestic dictatorship is "a" , rather than "the" true goal of all this. It should be noted that this latest specific plot is an effort to take another step in this direction after the steps taken by the Burger and Rehnquist Courts' erosion of the small civil liberty gains from the Warren Court and the development of the prison-industrial complex. This is in the larger context of the all around  Reaganite assault on the working class for the last twenty-plus years, including  privatization, loss of many social welfare benefits, union rights, consumers' rights, tenants' rights, anti-poverty policies and programs, civil rights,  reduction of taxation on the rich and corporations, et al. </HTML>