Sucker Punch Drunks
by pessimist
The operational strategy of the BFEE/PNAC Petroleum Pirate Posse has always been one of vectoring off a failed initiative so as to preserve the momentum. Such an operation appears to be underway right now concerning Bu$hCo initiatives against Iran: US takes a new tack
In a series of calibrated statements, numbering over a dozen within the space of 72 hours or so, senior officials in key positions in the US administration toned down their rhetoric against Iran.Lull 'em to sleep with nice words while doing something else behind the scenes?
NOTE: THIS POST SHOULD BE FIXED AND COMPLETE NOW - p
The downsizing of the strident US calls for regime change in Iran becomes obvious when the weekend statements are juxtaposed with what Iranian President Mohammad Khatami said in Tehran on Sunday.Khatami said that the pillars of democracy needed to be strengthened in Iran. He regretted that there were people in the Islamic world and in Iran whose religious thinking was rooted in outdated convictions of the most backward layers of the society. "They try, in vain, to give philosophical or religious justifications to their obsolete beliefs. The religion they offer is not only at odds with democratic values, but goes so far as to disregard even the most basic rights of the people."
This could also be said of some of the religionists who support Bu$hCo!
Khatami, with supreme irony, went on to lament that the ideology behind the formation of the Taliban and al-Qaeda was "embedded in the same convictions".The summary abandonment of the stick in US rhetoric and the weekend's handout of carrots can be viewed in perspective. The huge imperatives of the Middle East peace process are self-evident. From the fashion in which four top figures in the Bush administration chose to respond, it must be assumed that Washington has in hand much food for thought.
On the surface, this would appear to demonstrate that the US is going to accept the result of the 'vote' in Iraq and allow the Iranian-leaning Shi'a to take power as a way of watering down some of the Palestinian complaints about anti-Muslim acts by the US, and to calm the waters between the US and Iran. But knowing our be-loath-ed Bu$hCo, that ain't necessarily so. This article tends to support my contention:
US digs in deeper in Afghanistan
A legacy of the Cold War is widespread anti-US sentiment in the South and Central Asian regions, including Pakistan, which has strong links to militancy. The US has already drawn Islamabad into its fold, and wants to keep a close eye on it to ensure it remains fully on side, and Washington also wants to be in a position to monitor the region closely.Well-placed sources in Brussels have told Asia Times Online that as a result, a strong NATO base will be established in the Afghan province of Herat, bordering Iran, and a logistics hub for NATO might be established in Pakistan's southern port of Karachi.
Construction work has already begun on the NATO base in Herat, under the surveillance of Italian troops stationed there as part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force contingent of peacekeepers in the country. Currently, about 8,000 of these soldiers from 36 countries serve in Kabul and nine provinces north of the capital. The new base in Herat is expected to be big enough for about 10,000 troops, will feature a military airbase, and will act as NATO's headquarters in the country. There are also about 18,000 US troops in Afghanistan. A request for a NATO logistics hub in Karachi has already been conveyed to Pakistan.
Now that President George W Bush has won his second term, his priorities have visibly changed. The manhunt for al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Pakistan has virtually stopped. Whether it is military exercises or dialogue between the US and Pakistan, the "war against al-Qaeda" is a lesser priority: more important are agreements over the sale of military hardware and an increased role for the US in the region.
Add these bases to the (at least) fourteen being built in Iraq, and it's hard to see how Iran isn't one of the intended targets for the forces to be stationed there. Why else would so many resources be focused on one area? Maybe Asia Times coulmnist Henry C. K. Liu has a clue:
Historically, when power vacuums left by failed states threatened great powers, the ready solution was imperialist conquest. Such conquests were justified as necessary for imposing order and civilization over chaos and backwardness.But imperialism lost its legitimacy as a result of the disingenuous promotion of anti-imperialist sentiments by the warring imperialist powers of World War II. These warring powers were compelled to use anti-imperialism as incentives for mobilizing their colonial subjects to support their total war efforts. Imperialism became an unwitting victim of collateral conceptual damage in the second global war to end all wars.
After the Cold War, with a new form of economic imperialism under the euphemism of neo-liberal globalization ravishing economies around the planet, the post-World War II restraint and the Cold War freeze against political imperialism are now being dismantled as disorder in ravished countries grows more threatening to the sole remaining superpower.
Thus the neo-imperialist formula for the new Pax Americana is a two-punch operation. The first punch uses neo-liberalism to cause a weak state's economy to collapse to produce a failed state. [See Confessions of an Economic Hit Man - very highly recommended! - ed.]The second punch invades by force the failed state to delivery liberty as defined by the new imperialism to set it up as a US protectorate and economic colony. [Think Afghanistan and Iraq.]
Failed states are generally said to be increasingly trapped in a downward cycle of poverty and violence. Notwithstanding that many of the ills of failed states have been caused by globalized neo-liberal market fundamentalism, neo-imperialists argue that the solution is for the sole remaining superpower and its subservient allies to resort to imperialism again for the good of the world.
Anyone else hear in these comments a description of the words of The Perfessor and the other wrong-wing visitors to this site?
The question I would raise would be 'Good for whom?' Anyone whose brain still functions in a semblance of reality can see the predations of Bu$hCo upon the common good and the welfare of the nation. Can it be so shocking that only in America are a sizeable portion of the population not thus aware of Bu$hCo outrages? Only in America are people shocked that Bu$hCo plans for any region aren't welcomed with open arms strewing rose petals about. But I digress.
Failed states are not always weak states. They are sometimes strong states that have voluntarily forfeited basic state functions as a matter of ideology, or allowed them to be usurped by special-interest groups.Strong failed states are states that possess powerful military/police power for advancing the narrow economic interests of a small class of citizens while sacrificing a significant segment of the population as failed market victims.
In the US, socio-economic Darwinism is celebrated as indispensable for the survival of the economy in the market place, while scientific theories of evolution are challenged by Creationism in public schools.
Many Third World states collapsed after decolonization simply because they were artificial Western constructs in the first place, and not true states. All failed states in the Third World are located in former Western empires. Some Third World states are deemed failed states by the hegemonic superpower if the state apparatus is unable to uphold an effective monopoly of coercion over its entire territory to prevent meta-state activities deemed dangerous to the superpower. Such failed states lack an effective judiciary system to safeguard the rights of foreign and domestic private property, or are unable to fulfill international obligations such as repayment of sovereign or private debts to foreign financial institutions, or cannot prevent and police transactional economic crimes or the use of asymmetrical warfare by meta-state groups against strong states.
On the other hand, market states with advanced economies increasingly do not consider most human aspects of societies as proper state concerns, such as the provision of a rising standard of welfare to their citizens, which has been conveniently assigned to the indifferent workings of the market, but confining themselves to guarding and strengthening no-holds-barred free-market conditions through which private wealth is generated for the benefit of the strong, leaving the weak to perish in a natural selection. This amounts to a selective exercise of state power of coercion to favor one segment of the population or one type of institutions at the expense of all others.
The popular will is repeatedly frustrated through inflated minority rights backed by distorted constitutional interpretation on the part of politically appointed and biased courts.
In that respect, states such as the US can also be deemed as having failed through its rule by law, not of law. Other attributes of failed states, such as privatization of basic state functions, fit the ideological trends in super-strong market states such as the US today. Thus the ideological fixation prevalent in the US today can be seen as moving the US toward a failed-state syndrome.
These market states try to coerce other states also to become market states to prevent them from exercising sovereign control over their national territories, protecting their economies from structurally predatory global markets that amount to economic tyranny, regulating the behavior and lives of their population for the common good and in general aspiring to be strong states in defiance of globalized market fundamentals that lock them in permanent victimization by strong market states.
This is the neo-conservative agenda. President George W Bush says that free and democratic states are peaceful states, notwithstanding the historical fact that World War II was launched by an expansionist German Third Reich born of a democratic process and the resistance by a British coalition government born through the suspension of elections.The US under Bush is attempting an ambitious undertaking of universal ideological control that even Christianity under the Holy Roman Empire failed to accomplish with the Thirty Years' War, having to yield finally to the Peace of Westphalia of sovereign states. What Bush really means is that when the whole world subscribes to US values and accepts US power, not only out of fear but also out of respect for its power-backed legitimacy, the world will be peaceful.
While sovereignty is the organizing principle of the Westphalian world order, the legitimacy of international actions today is governed by Westphalian principles only if the state relinquishes its responsibility in economic affairs.A clear case of this is the way the sole remaining superpower treats oil-producing states. Nationalization of the oil industry by any member state of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), if coupled with a state policy detrimental to the fundamental oil-import needs of the sole superpower, or measures that upset the pricing structure of oil [think pricing in euros - ed.], will run the risk of being invaded by the superpower.
In a fundamental way, terrorism is the weapon of last resort for resisters of foreign-instigated failed statehood. Historically, terrorism tends to end when terrorists are granted due recognition of their legitimate grievances and promises of equitable redress.
Examples of this include the Haganah in Palestine, whose membership evolved into the political leaders of modern Israel, and the IRA, whose shaky peace in Northern Ireland is due to the participation of the political wing in governing that land. There is little doubt that the Muslim countries are the object of neocon interests because of the fact that their tribalist societies can hardly defend against neocolonialism, and that their possession of known large oil reserves makes them extremely important to the world's sole superpower, whose recreational needs alone far overshadow the business usage of petroleum in much of the world. If one is going to plunder another's lands, one should ensure that the effort will be rewarded handsomely. It wouldn't do, for example, to take advantage of Rwanda, whose economic value is so uncertain, and whose social conditions are extremely volatile. It might cost more than it would be worth. So, to paraphrase infamous bank robber Willie Sutton, one goes where the profits are.
Actions like those being taken against Iran (among other nations) overtly and covertly are not escaping the notice of the world. The rest of the world is on to Bu$hCo, and there are steps underway to limit the damage they can do to the real world order.
I hope to find enough time in the near future to present some of these moves, as the effects of actions that these nations will be taking in their defense will affect all Americans regardless of political affiliation or philosophy.
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