ACPlayer
05-21-2004, 07:03 AM
Chicken Hawk Strategy (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FE21Ak03.html)
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As a baseline for my judgment, I put forward several propositions: 1) The political class in every nation is a crop of cultivated liars - to be generous, obfuscators. Power has always resided in the hands of a minority in all societies of significant scale, and with the advent of mass politics and its language of egalitarianism, it became necessary to spin yarns to either justify or conceal the disparity; 2) Humanity is entering the condition of critical mass, leading to a level of competition within and between human groups and areas of the world that will amount to cannibalization: the possibilities for either economic growth or cost-free migration are coming to an end. This is true not simply because of the number of people that now exist and are coming to be, but also hinges on aspects of human nature and a set of divisive and irremediable historical developments, as well as environmental limits preset beneath a rising tide of expectations that are unsupportable
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In a recent interview on public broadcasting in the US with a trio of the typical, dreary pundits one has come to expect, Lieutenant-General William Odom (retired) called for the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, fully admitting the probability that the country will descend into civil war as a consequence: the subject of discussion was simply whether or not the war could be won. Odom presented three reasons the US went to war - weapons of mass destruction, overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime, and establishing a constitutional democracy "friendly" to the US. In that order, he declared the first irrelevant (didn't exist), the second accomplished, and the third not possible to achieve, at least for several decades. Ergo, let's get the hell out and deal with whoever comes out on top.
I imagine President George W Bush, his deputy Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pearl and Wolfowitz sitting in a room listening to this drivel and reacting, with Bush fuming about god and freedom until he goes for a jog with the secret service - the others listen on and nod. After the president leaves, the party in power gets out the cognac and heaves a collective sigh: "Why do they put such people on TV in the first place?" any one of them might ask rhetorically. Odom is either intellectually conditioned or obedient enough to keep the discussion about the causes for the war within the narrow lines the establishment wants, but for whatever reason he draws the wrong conclusion. The Bush cabal didn't go to Iraq for any of Odum's reasons as Odom understands them, and so they are all irrelevant to the decision on whether or not to get out.
While Bush is rubbing his crotch with talcum powder and putting on his sneakers, our quartet of idealists turn to discussing real issues, such as oil, the prospects for privatizing the region, derailing any possibilities for a common currency among Arab nations, the position of the dollar in petroleum markets and for the central reserves in Asia, and the balance of trade between the US and the nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
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[ QUOTE ]
As a baseline for my judgment, I put forward several propositions: 1) The political class in every nation is a crop of cultivated liars - to be generous, obfuscators. Power has always resided in the hands of a minority in all societies of significant scale, and with the advent of mass politics and its language of egalitarianism, it became necessary to spin yarns to either justify or conceal the disparity; 2) Humanity is entering the condition of critical mass, leading to a level of competition within and between human groups and areas of the world that will amount to cannibalization: the possibilities for either economic growth or cost-free migration are coming to an end. This is true not simply because of the number of people that now exist and are coming to be, but also hinges on aspects of human nature and a set of divisive and irremediable historical developments, as well as environmental limits preset beneath a rising tide of expectations that are unsupportable
[/ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In a recent interview on public broadcasting in the US with a trio of the typical, dreary pundits one has come to expect, Lieutenant-General William Odom (retired) called for the hasty withdrawal of US forces from Iraq, fully admitting the probability that the country will descend into civil war as a consequence: the subject of discussion was simply whether or not the war could be won. Odom presented three reasons the US went to war - weapons of mass destruction, overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime, and establishing a constitutional democracy "friendly" to the US. In that order, he declared the first irrelevant (didn't exist), the second accomplished, and the third not possible to achieve, at least for several decades. Ergo, let's get the hell out and deal with whoever comes out on top.
I imagine President George W Bush, his deputy Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, Pearl and Wolfowitz sitting in a room listening to this drivel and reacting, with Bush fuming about god and freedom until he goes for a jog with the secret service - the others listen on and nod. After the president leaves, the party in power gets out the cognac and heaves a collective sigh: "Why do they put such people on TV in the first place?" any one of them might ask rhetorically. Odom is either intellectually conditioned or obedient enough to keep the discussion about the causes for the war within the narrow lines the establishment wants, but for whatever reason he draws the wrong conclusion. The Bush cabal didn't go to Iraq for any of Odum's reasons as Odom understands them, and so they are all irrelevant to the decision on whether or not to get out.
While Bush is rubbing his crotch with talcum powder and putting on his sneakers, our quartet of idealists turn to discussing real issues, such as oil, the prospects for privatizing the region, derailing any possibilities for a common currency among Arab nations, the position of the dollar in petroleum markets and for the central reserves in Asia, and the balance of trade between the US and the nations of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
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