roachboy

gee, so chomaky has been wrong in the past.
but he has also produced a large body of very interesting, very precise work on political questions--material that you should read (manufacturing consent, the follow-up work on the "terrorism industry).

the combination of the two results in a requirement that one read his work critically, that one question his sources--in short that one engage with it and continue thinking---chomsky is a social/political critic who operates from a particular situation which he does not try to conceal--his works are not the Word of a Prophet brought down from the Mountain--a relation to critique that ends up being little more than the inversion of the present mode of domination.

i have never understood teh value of intellectual passivity right or left.
i so see nothing of value in sob's post, which rehearses well-known, well-documented questions that have arisen across chomsky's political writings--they do not invalidate everything chomsky has to say--the list of questions does not even address what he has to say in this particular situation--instead, you get typical conservative character assassination. cant deal with the argument? smear the messenger.

i want to be clear about this: i am not (obviously) a unabashed fan of chomsky. i am far from uncritical of his positions--i disagreed with his position on the faurisson case, for example. but then i disagree at one point or another with most anarchists. but he is saying, and has been saying, things about the gap that seperates what america has become from what it pretends to be--these things are important--they should give reason to pause and wonder what exactly "we" have allowed to happen (allowed because in principle the people have power in the states--that it works out such that this "power" is exercized one day every four years, and that wihtin a context of oligarchy is the sad fact of the matter--but this reality never stops conservatives from bragging about the amazing level of (purely formal) freedoms american enjoy. in fact, the people have no power unless they organize themselves and force change--a prospect that the right hates--except when it comes to themselves of course)


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as for the earlier question of linking or not linking interests shaped by oil and/or other raw materials and the geopolitics that seem to have informed the iraq war: perhaps i was not sufficiently clear--questioning the priority chomsky ascribed to oil interests does not mean that they are irrelevant. it simply means that focussing on the war in iraq across the medium of oil gives you nothing specific to explain why iraq, why at this time.

it also puts you in the position of having to assume that statements like you find via the project for a new american century are simply false--i do not buy that--i think these people really believe in their vision of america as military hegemon--they really believe in the reagan-era policy that was once described as military keynesianism--and i think these people know that if globalization was allowed to continue to unfold as it appeared it would under clinton (via multilateral accords in which the united states acted as a partner--in principle at least), the era of nation-states would soon become an antique--and along with it would slide into a type of quaintness the entirety of nationalist-based ideology--and conservative politics would become useless, outmoded, even more incoherent, because without the nation-state, they have nothing to say--nothing at all.

the iraq war seems more theater--its logic follows from the reaganite reading of the first gulf war, which understood america as having been "stabbed in the back" by the un, prevented from johnwayne action against hussein in 1991. that this reading is wholly false, empirically wrong, does not mean that it is any less compelling as a mythology for these folk.

the best argument for the oil interest interpretation can be found in michael klare's book "resource wars"--it outlines the history of american stratgy shifts as a function of shifting relations to raw material supplies. it is a compelling argument, but like i said it doesnt provide any real way to understand why iraq at the particular time, why this way, etc. it pushes to the side the grotesque theater put on by the bush administration before the un--makes the administration's contempt for the un accidental (a contempt that is dutifully repeated by the population of bushworld). so the question is more which reading provides a more detailed, compelling reading of a particular set of actions (bushwar) rather than which one provides a more global context. it is not an either/or question.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite