[lbo-talk] Boycott Japan and China

Yoshie Furuhashi critical.montages at gmail.com
Fri Aug 11 09:54:58 PDT 2006


On 8/11/06, Marvin Gandall <marvgandall at videotron.ca> wrote:
> Yoshie wrote:.
> >
> > On 8/10/06, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
> >> The following article, with its quotations from bigniew Brzezinski gives
> >> support to Marvin Gandall's argument that Iraq is a neo-con aberration,
> >> as opposed to my argument that the invasion of the Mideast is consistent
> >> with, even demanded by, the long-range interests of u.s. imperialism. We
> >> shall see.
> >
> > What Washington has been doing about Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Iran,
> > etc. sure is consistent with US imperialism...
> =================================
> You think?
>
> I'm not very impressed with the results of the Bush administration's
> deployment of ground forces in Iraq and Afghanistan or its encouragement of
> the similar use of Isreali troops in Lebanon. Nor I am impressed with its
> early unilateralist threats to pursue the same agenda against the other two
> members of the evil axis, Iran and North Korea, after it disposed of Iraq.
>
> I think the views of the bipartisan Democratic and Republican defence and
> foreign policy experts, including Brzenzinski, are much more realistic (and
> consequently more effective) in their recognition that the interests of the
> Empire are best furthered by the use of political and economic rather than
> military action against unfriendly regimes, and that this is best undertaken
> in concert with its allies.

Tactical differences exist, but what are exactly the interests of the multinational empire in the Middle East?


> You're not suggesting, are you, that the Bush administration would be better
> advised, from the standpoint of US imperialism, to revert to unilateralism
> and reliance on its high-tech armed forces - the (ideological) view which
> governed its first three years in office?

We can only evaluate means in relation to ends. We may imagine that, say, if _we_ were running the empire, we'd have these interests, these long-term, medium-term, and short-term goals, and these means would work better for those goals than the White House's means. But the White House must have different goals, based on its own conception of the empire's interests, than what we think should be the empire's goals. We can't rule out that the means the White House has chosen aren't the best possible ones under the circumstances to further their goals (though not our conception of what is in the interest of the empire).

It's like that joke from Yes, Prime Minister:

Jim Hacker: "I know exactly who reads the papers: The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country; The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country; The Times is read by people who actually do run the country; The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country; The Financial Times is read by people who own the country; The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is." Sir Humphrey: "Prime Minister, what about the people who read The Sun?" Bernard Woolley: "Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."

I'm afraid most Western leftists think like the Guardian readers. :->

In the USA, it gets even more confusing, because the New York Times and the Washington Post are read by both people who actually do run the country _and_ people who think they ought to run the country.

We need to keep in mind: people who own the empire, people who actually run the empire, and people who think they ought to run the empire (because they think they are smarter and more competent than the ones who are running it, but who can never hope to take power in their lifetimes) have radically different conceptions of the empire's interests and what goals it should aim for. -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>



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