> The view of the world you're responding to doesn't allow much for
> agency - "US imperialism" does things, not actual people holding office
> who belong to political parties with distinctive views of the world. And
> that view of the world doesn't accept that different parties hold
> different views of the world, since they're two cheeks of the same
> derriere, as Hitchens once put it.
True. I see the parties as two cheeks of the same behind, each with a slightly different shape, colour, and texture, but that destroys the metaphor. :) ======================= Yoshie wrote:
> Tactical differences exist, but what are exactly the interests of the
> multinational empire in the Middle East?
Broadly speaking, the same as anywhere else. The advanced capitalist countries led by the US want friendly regimes which will ensure access to their national resources, throw open their markets to their goods and services, and allow their multinationals to freely invest in their economies.
They are resistant to nationalist forces which want to replace friendly regimes and regulate access to their supplies and markets in order to promote more balanced and equitable development. Those states bordering on the Middle East and beyond which have large Muslim (or Kurdish) minorities also fear the radicalizing effect of Middle East instability within their own populations.
As far as the tactical differences between and within the advanced capitalist countries go, the liberal bourgeoisie favours economic weapons; the conservative wing is less cautious about using lethal ones. But the latter seems always to have to relearn how difficult it can be to employ imperial military force abroad from bourgeois democratic societies where people can vote, watch TV, and don't want their kids killed and maimed in incomprehensible foreign wars. Since the advent of the Bush administration, I've become fond of Chomsky's shrewd observation (maybe borrowed) that "small differences can have large consequences."
I wasn't able to relate your newspaper analogy to what I'd written previously, and am curious about what you meant to convey.