[lbo-talk] Waterboarding etc.

SA s11131978 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 26 13:32:02 PST 2009


shag carpet bomb wrote:


> My earlier question on that thread elicited a response that I didn't
> quite grasp. *Now* I do. You're objecting to a structualist analysis.
> Which would make sense: you're an historian, right?
>
> I take it some readings on epistemology and history have been on the
> table lately? :)

Actually, I'm usually annoyed by how anti-structuralist historians can be. (And I haven't been reading up on epistemology and history lately but any good recommendations are welcome!) It's not the existence of structures that I'm disputing, it's the nature of them. The standard image, when it comes to US foreign policy, is of some quasi-permanent imperial apparatus operating quietly in the background, more or less compelling a president to do its bidding.

For example, the assumption seems to be that Obama is surging forces into Afghanistan now because this is somehow an imperative for running "the empire." As far as I can tell, though, Obama is doing it just because he promised he would in the campaign. And he made the promise as a way to signal to the electorate that he wasn't a peacenik, in light of his pledge to withdraw from Iraq. As far as aggrandizing an American empire is concerned, I can't think of a place less relevant to doing that than Afghanistan. (During the Cold War, Afghanistan was the standard example people would cite of a place that was strategically irrelevant for America. We ended up sponsoring the Mujahideen to give the Soviets their own Vietnam; what we're doing today is more likely to end up giving ourselves one.)

So the idea that running for president is "like applying for a position whose job description is world's chief terrorist" - it sounds a little deterministic to me.

SA



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