Chomsky comments that Clarke adds "important new information, which fits in well to what we already could very plausibly surmise: that for Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, etc., reducing the threat of terror is or only marginal interest (they surely understood that invading Iraq would be very likely to increase the threat, as it did), whereas establishing the first stable military bases in a client state, right at the heart of the world's major source of energy, is a very high priority for the goals of global hegemony."
I think you'd agree that that's what we should be stressing, not joining Clarke's call for a redoubled war on terrorism. --CGE
On Wed, 31 Mar 2004, Michael Pollak wrote:
> Well the emphasis here is on long run. I think it's reasonable to
> picture the present electorate as strongly polarized, with 40% in each
> camp not moving and 20% in play. Those 20% are by definition the
> least political voters in the country.
>
> So I think it's fair to assume these are not people that are watching
> Sunday news programs 7 months before the election, nor watching
> C-Span, nor reading online pundits rehash C-Span. It also follows
> that this quintile isn't affected by crucial details when they come
> out. They're affected when -- and if -- the frame of reference of
> changes, if the basic narrative changes.
>
> So if Clarke affects them, it will be indirectly in the long run.
> But I think that could happen. Clarke has suddenly made it perfectly
> respectable to say on mainstream TV that
>
> 1) the war in Iraq was a mistake because it undermined the war on
> terrorism;
>
> 2) that 9/11 could have been stopped; and
>
> 3) that we are unsafer now than we were before.
>
> If those points are taken up and become tropes, they'll matter. When
> they've been repeated over and over and over as simple declarative
> statements and the reaction person nods as if Yeah, that's true. Or
> when it causes reporters start asking follow up questions, which
> there's been a plague of this week in the oddest places. (I even saw
> someone do it on Fox, to Rumsfeld.) And this administration, so good
> at being on script, is unbelievably clumsy when they're forced to
> improvise.
>
> There's enough time to establish a new mainstream common sense by the
> time of the Repug convention. It's by no means guaranteed. But the
> initial polls would have little bearing on the question of whether
> that will happen.
>
> Also its true when people say Clarke is self-interested and partisan.
> He's partisan in the everyday sense of the word, meaning he criticizes
> one side much more than the other. What he is saying (as opposed to
> how) will take a bit more time to filter in. It's something that most
> people in that middle quintile will find it hard to conceive of: the
> entire Iraq war had *nothing* to do with terrorism? So *every* time
> they said it did, they . . . . ? For people who don't already think
> like this, something like this requires a gestalt shift. Which takes
> time.