geez....yet another aspect of this "war on terror" that seems to repeat features of the algerian war..
unable to sort out who is the enemy, the assumption gets traction that everyone is an enemy---surveillance on the broadest possible grounds---justification?---paranoia. in this context, the erasure of any meaningful line between the "enemy" and opponents of the war=altogether too simple.
unable to sort out who the enemy is, really--how the enemy is organized, where that organization stops and starts---torture as interrogation technique---justification?---we are under attack, national security, expediency, paranoia (driven by the inability to mark and insode/outside distinction vis-a-vis the "enemy")
much of the intensity of the opposition to the algerian war derived from revelations about how far outside the purview of the law the military was willing to go.
his opposition brought down the 4th republic
where did the antiwar movement go? what happened to it? why are people not out in great number in the streets to really pressure this administration?
last fractured note (no time): i do not think that the relativizing move will take in this case (see above)--instead, i expect to see another conservative defense via motivation--bush "sincerely believed" false intel, sincerely believed hussein was a threat, sincerely believed that the broadest possible domestic communications surveillance were justified---the curious thing about this defense is that it really defends nothing--any and all actions, whether legal or not, can be explained by imputing motive. to wit: the gulag was not a problem because stalin sincerely believed the folk improsoned were enemies of teh state; the holocaust was not a problem because hitler sincerely believed that the jews were a real threat to whatever....these analogies are hyperbolic in a sense (i am not equating the above survellance matter with these much larger and more grotesque aspects of the histor fo the last century) but they nonetheless do point to the meaninglessness of the defense mounted by the rove machine.
btw: bad news released on a friday. the old reagan trick. lowest news readership of the week. good news monday, when folk read the paper--bad news friday when folk are thinking about the weekend.
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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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