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there is no way that the "wolfowitz doctrine"---which you can derive from the mission statement of the project for a new american century--could have been sold to the americans---it provides no specific motives for war at any particular time. if the bush people followed its logic, they had no choice but to lie about the specifics....the problem with hussein was not that he was a thug--the americans have backed worse thugs than he for years, particularly under the logic of the cold war--but rather than hussein was not playing by the american's rules any more (he became inconvient)--this was doubled by the symbolic problems raised for the neocons by the outcome of the first gulf war--that international institutions, symbolized by the un--overrode nation-states and the (neoconservative "mayberry machiavellian") understanding of national interests--a problem that for them has been exacerbated by the development of globalizing capitalism---the logic of this interpretation can go on at length, but you can probably derive the moves and conclusions.
the point, with reference to this thread, is that the colonial war in iraq is carried out in terms of a very particular vision of america, its nature, its interests, its role, etc.. that it circulates in the context of conservative ideology in general domestically enables these assumptions to blur into the claims to a monopoly on americanness that nitwits on the order of limbaugh have been trafficking in for a decade--a move that links back to the jurassic mists of the history of american conservativism. the bush administration operates with a very particular, theologically based vision of this fiction called america---it does not cross with the country in general. it is entirely possible and legitimate, as others on this thread have pointed out, to oppose the bushvision of america, its wolfowitz-inspired "logic" for international affairs---and not find oneself being any less american for it. only those who work from inside conservative ideology would understand things in those terms---and i find this strange--because using the term "america" as conservatives do is an obvious tactic for shutting down debate amongst members of an informed citizenry--which is of a piece with shutting down even the shallow version of democracy that functions in the states---even as that same ideology legitimates the colonial war in iraq by claiming it is in part about the export of democracy.
sadly, the neocons have turned out to be better students of gramsci and the notion of war of position than have people on the left, such as it is---they have understood that if you control the frame of reference, the terms of debate, you control the logic within which conversations can happen. the problem with arguments that happen between conservatives and their many opponents is one of frame of reference--for the right, the terms of the now-dominant discourse are abosulte--they have no interest in relativizing those terms--they think through them--because it is a matter of faith--while people outside that frame of reference tend to relativize that framework and in doing so use terms and modes of arguments that simply fly past the modes of thinking particular to conservative operatives.
personally, i oppose bushwar and bushworld entirely. i am not happy to watch it fail because the failure of these people generates consequences that the rest of us have to endure. on the other hand, each step that conservativism in its present form takes toward the ash-heap of history is fine with me. the war in iraq is simply the most extreme and absurd manifestation of that vision.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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