greg: welcome, first of all.
this business that runs through your post about the "lack of resolve" in a democracy seems to me close to an old argument for dictatorship.
do you mean that?
how does this notion of "will" that seems to be presupposed by this argument function?
do you really believe that there is a direct connection between the "will" of the people and military actions?
how does that work?
do you imagine the american people sitting around radios and televisions thinking really hard about iraq? do you see a linkage between that collective thinking really hard and outcomes, such that you can effectively link "division of the will" to problematic outcomes on the ground in the context of a particular military operation? how does that work? i understand that abstract argument, but think it goofy: i want to know how you imagine this theory to operate in fact.
i dont think it does operate in fact.
i think it is an element of authoritarian mythology the primary function of which is to demonize dissent.
it is ideological dreaming. ideology here is in the marxist sense: an argument rooted entirely in the class interests of a particular faction of the dominant order that is presented as if it were general. in this case, it seems like you have an ideological expression of the authoritarian dreamworld of a hyper-conservative faction within the military apparatus.
but whatever: maybe if you can explain to me how this business of the unity of a "national will"--whatever the hell that is--is operationalized in the world that other people know about (and not just in the ideological fantasyworld of the authoritarian right) and we'll go from there.
your understanding of the run-up to the iraq war seems to me surreal. where did you get that information? is this the kind of "history" that you are fed in the context of the military? what happens to it if your introduce more complex factual material into the mix? i ask because all i see in reading your post is a justification for the invasion of iraq that distorts history nearly to the point of replacing it with a conservative dreamscape. i am particularly amused by the erasure of the un sanctions regime and your apparent assumption--which follows from the erasure of the un from your "history"---that the americans "had to act" because no=one else would.
this leads you straight into a wholly fictional scenario that justifies american actions in iraq. maybe this sort of stuff is psychologically necessary to persuade folk whose ambivalent fortune it is to be facing having to go to iraq that there is some rationale behind it--but if that is the case, you should perhaps be up front about it. say: i accept this because, given my position, i see no alternative.
because that at least provides a rationale for floating the arguments that you do which are from any other angle empirically false.
there's more but i'll hold off for the time being.
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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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