I think it was DH who wrote, in part:
>> "2) he never makes the connection between the alleged decline in U.S.
> economic power and the counter-assertion of military power as a
> substitute (it's simply asserted, never proved - which isn't surprising, because I think he'd have a hard time proving it).">>
First of all, let me say I think that it is impossible to 'prove' just about any interpretive theory that speaks to current events, as is the case here. Perhaps, though, it is the case that there is no real economic decline (YET) but that the ruling class perceives that it is over-seeing a decline and loss of power, or at least the potential for it, or the imminence of it. That would certainly characterize much of the support that Reagan and the first Bush got in the 1980s. If there is continuity there with the current Bush, it is not that difficult to rationalize his 'bold' actions oblivious to multilateralism with Europe (which is one cornerstone of US domination in the post-war era) in the name of such things as 'democratically re-aligning the Middle East'.
In reply to DH, MJA opened with:
>> To see renewed US military imperialism as a direct reflection of decline in economic power is a serious mistake. It ignores major political contradictons which were piled on top of one another to achieve economic power in the first place.Simply because military aggression and economic decline appear "hand in hand" means nothing: in any scenario: causation, coincidence and association can all go "hand in hand".>>
What is the actual cause of these two effects (economic decline or at least a perception of it, and the constant need for a huge military and war as foreign policy). I think such things as national public debt, trade deficits, federal government deficits, a currency in decline, and the manufacturing prowess of Europe and E. Asia relative to the U.S. are often elements cited in such analysis, even if only implicitly. Most American intellectuals I am in communication with believe such analysis (which makes liberals as potentially reactionary over US power as neoconservatives). Few in the establishment (for example, the politicized parts of the federal government that vote en masse for Republicans) would be honest enough to say, however, it is the stranglehold of militarism for profit over the very constitution of the federal government (with foreign policy more as an effect than anything, since it can be used in so many ways to justify such waste even in the face of economic ruin).
MJA continues:
>> This is a glaring error. The war in Iraq and the broader scheme to
transform the ME is not about any economic decline. Rather, it is a
preemptive political maneuver borne of an understanding that the old
colonial arrangement buttressing US political power in the region is
falling to pieces. This arrangement consisted of three components: 1)
despotic puppet regimes, 2) ossified, defeated, bought-off former Arab
nationalist regimes, 3) the local pit-bull responsible for smashing Arab
> nationalism, Israel.
But don't ruling elites often think that decline is imminent when the old arrangements no longer hold? BTW, Saddam's Iraq doesn't really fit in numbers one, two or three except as being identified by Israel as the number one Arab enemy, since Iraqi technical capability allowed it to pump huge amounts of oil and field an army that could manoeuvre at a division level and above. If anything, Saddam (who no doubt knew he had to give and compromise in order to remain in power in Iraq, as his last decade in power already demonstrated) was moving towards a style of Chavezism while giving more autonomy to the regions and competing groups of Iraq (remember, key founders of Baathism in Iraq were secular Shia). Success at such an evolution would make him and the country that survived his rule (and all its mistakes) very dangerous to US and Israeli power in the ME. Also very dangerous to US and UK interests (and Russian too) was Iraq's ability to affect the price of oil when the oil industry consensus (and the consensus of the interests that finance its development) was that the price of oil needed to be controlled upward to finance more development (circa 1998-2000).
Continuing:
>>The growing, festering problem with this arrangement is Israel, since it is a foreign insertion, a colonial settler-state, and therefore
complicates the usual pattern of simply supporting local compradors.
That is to say, while Israel was a useful military outpost in crushing
Arab nationalism, it has also *aggravated* Arab resistance in the
process; since socialism is discredited, the face of the resistance has
become political Islam.>>
Yet when Islamic 'clerics' have someone imprisoned or killed in Saudi Arabia, that's the state talking, not the resistance. Meanwhile , as far as I can tell, it's been mostly moderate and revolutionary Islamists in Iraq who are willing to use deadly force to fight the US's abomination in Iraq (with one irony being that some of the more conservative or fundamentalist Islamists of the insurgency are actually Shia, not Sunni). Hence the need for the US and Israel to produce emotional issues and media displays to undercut this very real resistance (you know, so such myths are put forward as the following: they typically behead people, the animals, they kill innocent civilians, it's hold out Baathists and Al Qaeda killing the US-loving Shia, it's regressive Sunni elements brought to life by the US's imperialism--they have joined Al Qaeda and march to Zarqawi's tune. And a thousand other emotional and most false reasons for Americans to go to bed at night reminded of 'WHY WE FIGHT' and 'WHY WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS'.
All such propaganda efforts seem pretty laughable when you realize that most Shia deaths in Iraq are Shia-on-Shia, secular Shia vs. religious ones, and religious Shia killing religious Shia for the control of the riches the pilgrimmage/tourism industry brings (since Iraq, not Saudi Arabia, is the historic centre of Shia Islam). The main popular appeal of the US's Shia bete noire, Al Sadr, is he wants to clean up Shia religious society and all its corruption (like Sistani and his ilk) and send it packing back to Iran (which doesn't want Sistani either). His enemies are Sistani, the secular shitbags who sometimes line up with him to line their pockets and sometimes rival him when they have an army backing up 'democratic political processes' (e.g., Allawi, Chalabi) and the US Occupation, not the Sunni resistance (who have helped train and have fought with al Sadr's resistance).
Moving down we get to:
>>So what does the artificially locked-in political paradigm dictate? The
Arabs must be remolded, fragmented, smashed, redrawn in order to
complement Israel's needs for expansionism. Everything has to be shaped
around Israeli interests. Simply follow the politics. Take a look at the
associations of the leading intellectuals who had hankered for war - all
of them are tied in with Israel either militarily, financially, or
politically through Likud, JINSA, DPB, or AIPAC - they are all
ideological Zionists. Naturally, they did not pull a coup or act alone,
but rather in concert with, other reactionary forces - but they led the
charge.>>
Yes, and let us be clear about it. This includes zioliberals, many of whom had a lot of say in two Clinton administrations (which perpetuated a permanent state of war against Iraq) and then fell in step when the ziocons got so much power with the Bush-Cheney clans. (Of those clans, it might be said, the main political interests are using any belief system that is in the majority in the polity that could somehow be politically channelled to support increased federal spending on military and energy infrastructure, which is not to say Exxon or Boeing, necessarily, since these guys are actually rather arriviste, associated with such indescribable and largely unknown entities as Carlyle Group and Halliburton, not mainstream corporate America, which is what Exxon and Boeing are, no matter how much they suck at the federal teat when times get hard.) Good examples, by the way, of the zioliberal are none other than Kenneth Pollack (who got his rather ugly mug on CNN too many times to count), as well as former Clinton Secretary of Defence, Cohen. We might also add presidential candidate and former NATO commander, Gen. Wes Clarke. Oh, well, shit, just about any major Democrat, whatever their ethnicity.
>>And look at the results: the only player that comes away victorious from the mess in Iraq no matter what is Israel. A divided Iraq, with Israeli special forces already collaborating with the Kurds in the north. An end to the only Arab state left with any muscle that held an anti-Zionist stance. Greater suspicion thrown on two other old-time enemies, Syria and Iran, who support "terrorist" groups that have targeted Israeli, but never directly, American interests. Ditto for the Palestinians, who have studiously avoided attacking the Americans but now fall into the generalized category of ragheads which has been burned into the increasingly hateful American mind as a result of having been sucked into the vortex that is the ME conflict.>>
Well, Halliburton was given a lifeline (since the asbestos claims should have put it out of business faster than you can say Enron), Boeing (a brand almost as well known as Coca Cola or Yahoo) reaped huge profits from making bombs, and Carlyle Group has managed to work to great effect defence contracting along with private equity investing in 'liberalised' economies and 'global sectors' to quite good effect (synergy for them is being able to take over a defence contractor or an energy infrastructure company in Europe or Turkey--or perhaps even Israel).
>> In essence, the "war on terror" is nothing but the Israelization of the imperialist dynamic - the US has been drawn into a kind of
Israeli-Palestinian conflict writ large. The most beautiful part of this
game is that anyone who points it out this process on the mainstream
level - with the semi-exception of Michael Scheuer - is castigated as an
"anti-Semite". The irony of fetishized "political correctness" must not
be lost on the families of the 100,000 Iraqi "Semites" snuffed out since
March 2003.>>
Perhaps this is one way of intepreting it. I look at 'renewed US militarism' and ask, when was it renewed? Clinton overall increased defence and 'anti-terror security and intelligence spending. Bush-Cheney simply used the emotionalism of a few thousand dying in the WTC attacks as an excuse to get carte blanche for federal war and anti-terror spending (a few hundred million dollars spent on mangrove planting and an early warning system in Asia could have saved far more lives than were lost in 9-11). Getting a war and occupation going, whatever else you might say about it, is another successful Bush strategy to justify his check writing to keep paying out money the US doesn't have to the very groups that run the political system and its federal government. But such carte blanche is temporary if you believe any of the 'laws' of economics the ruling classes of North America, Europe, E. Asia and the OECD believe. So, the US subsidises the Israeli abomination in the ME, and the developed world seems to subsidise the abomination that is the US national security state. Have the ziocons and zioliberals somehow worked magic and launched the US-Israel deathreich into some trajectory that goes on forever?
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