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it does not matter, really, whether hussein did not did not threaten to united states.
what matters, as i argued above, is that the neocons saw in the first gulf war a nasty precedent in which the agreement about extent of engagement fashioned amongst the members of the coalition limited what they saw as the johnwayne narrative of american interests, which was about legitimating unilateral military action---again, the second iraq war follows from the first, not from anything in between.
hussein was a symbol, whose importance and actions had to be inflated so that he was understood as important enough to warrant a rerun of the first gulf war.
the neocons saw hussein as violating the rules of the game as they understood it--but without the first gulf war framing the matter, he would have been of no consequence, his actions overlooked, as the americans are wont to do with dictators whose general politics are convenient for the americans and their interests.
when i agreed in general terms with onetime, i posed the caveat that the agreement was predicated on inserting the narrative he outlined into the framework outlined by the project for a new american century, for example--which enables onetime's narrative to operate, but with all the terms for understanding that narrative switched to other grounds.
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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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