> Slavoj's Foreign Policy essay on Iraq has just been posted on the
> lacan.com site: <http://www.lacan.com/zifp.htm>.
>
Zizek gives three reasons for the war in Iraq. The second, which he calls "the key factor," is "the urge to brutally assert and signal unconditional U.S. hegemony." He associates this with "neoconservative thinkers."
"As for the second reason, the urge to demonstrate unconditional U.S. hegemony, the Bush administration's National Security Strategy calls for translating America's "position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence" into "decades of peace, prosperity, and liberty." But neoconservative thinkers speak in balder terms what their brethren in the White House cannot. In their recent book, The War over Iraq, neoconservatives William Kristol and Lawrence F. Kaplan write, "The mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there.... We stand at the cusp of a new historical era.... This is a decisive moment.... It is so clearly about more than Iraq. It is about more even than the future of the Middle East and the war on terror. It is about what sort of role the United States intends to play in the twenty-first century." One cannot but agree with that statement: The U.S. attack on Iraq has effectively put the future of the international community at stake, raising fundamental questions about the "new world order" and what rules will regulate it."
He makes no mention, however, of the connection of these thinkers and this reason to ideas of Nietzsche and Heidegger that he himself appropriates.
Ted