roachboy

let's think about this strange accusation that mike brings to the table above: that "the left" wants the americans to loose the war in iraq.

1. as a simple statement, it is self-evidently rooted in projection--it must be difficult for the few remaining inhabitants of conservativeland to cope with the debacle that the bush administration has turned out to be. political survival in the short-to=medium run for the right requires that someone anyone else be blamed for what bushco has wrought for itself in iraq--whence whatever appeal this claim of mike's may have.

it is doubly strange to read his initial post to this thread, in which he starts off by ridiculing the edito that host bit above only to follow that with a recapitulation of what the edito warns against--conservative revisionism on iraq. but whatever.

i dont think the desires of "the left" are of much consequence, frankly: those of use who opposed this debacle from the outset are i am quite sure divided on what outcome we would like to see---it would be quite easy to link the illegitimacy of the arguments for war, the ineptness of its execution etc. to a desire for defeat as a kind of poetic justice--but i also think that is too simple.

2.

what is the war in iraq? it is a function of the neocon view of globalizing capitalism, of the arrangement of power that the neocons understood to be desirable. that order is one in which conservative politics can still operate--at least in the states--because it is rooted in the preservation of the american nation-state as an ideological unit--the idea was to use iraq as a means to assert american military domination--and by way of that to position the united states as the hegemon that presides over what any sane person would have to understand as a global neocolonial system.

so iraq was an element within, and a defense of, a radicalization of the status quo, and attempt to lock one version of the global political order in place and to prevent the political consequences of globalization/neocolonialism from swamping the ideological space from within which american conservative politics can function.

in other words, the iraq adventure was never about the confrontation of Cowboy George and the Evil Saddam Hussein at noon in front of kitty's saloon in an Important Gundown draw pardner.
it was from the outset a conflict that only made sense within a much bigger context.
the war on terror, whatever that is, was simply a pretext. like wolfowitz said at the time, it sold well. it was expedient. it explains fuck all.

so what would be at stake with the increasingly likely american loss in iraq?
the present neo-colonial order is not sustainable--it is not sustainable politically, it is not sustainable economically, it is not sustainable ethically, it is not sustainable practically. it is a system of economic domination with the mind-bending incompetence of the imf/world bank etc. at its center. it has sold itself to itself first and to the world second across the ideology of neoliberalism, the fiction of free trade, the fiction of free markets--all of which have been shown, empirically, to be charades---"free trade" in the context of overwhelming economic assymetry is colonialism--"freedom" in that context is a word you get to use to not describe the reality under which you live--freedom is a term that functions to rationalise domination, to rationalize being-dominated.

this is what it looks like to be "free" under the aegis of neocolonialism american-style: you cannot build infrastructure, you are hobbled by debt; you cannot develop an autonomous agriculture, you are hobbled by debt; you cannot maintain social programs, you are hobbled by debt; you give up power to shape fundamental economic policies, you are hobbled by debt. you are forced to remove tarrifs, you are hobbled by debt. you are forced to watch the destruction of entire local economic sectors, forced to accept the dumping of american agricultural overproduction, you are hobbled by debt. you find yourself dealing with social and political turmoil but can do nothing, not really, because the prerogatives to shape policy that would address causes have been signed away. you are hobbled by debt.

not only that, but this debt comes with interest rates that would make the most predatory credit card companies blanche.

why? there is alot to say about this---in the end, this line of too complicated for a messageboard format--too many variables---but let's take one as a little allegory:

since the 1980s, the imf has been one of the central generators of social and economic crisis in the world. within the united states, we talk about free markets. we think it means what it says--but for the rest of the planet, subject to the chaos that follows in the wake of imf actions--you know, structural adjustment, shock therapy, etc etc etc---which are effectively geared around enabling the united states to not adjust its interior economic organization---so it happens that one of the main effects of imf policies is not greater economic or political freedom--quite the contrary--one of the main effects IS the enabling of american dumping practices. the irrationality of the present system of production, particularly in agriculture, in the united states is dumped on the south across the modalities of "structural adjustment" (for example)...so the underlying dysfunctions of the existing economic organization of the united states are duplicated--the institutional framework, dominated by the americans, that fundamentally shaped neocolonialism, forces the southern hemisphere to develop as the mirror-image of american internal dysfunctions.

hwo did this happen? well one explanation is the idiocy of neoliberalism. another is that the americans--particularly the american right--cannot imagine how to address the effects of the structure of the american economy, cannot imagine how to change directions or rethink anything--their actual demographic--not the populist one, the actual one---benefits mightily from the existing order--so teh present neocolonial system is built around it.
but the main explanation is simple: the imf is a relic of the bretton woods arrangement: it was set up to function within that logic. it now operates in an adhoc manner, without particular coherence, wreaking havoc everywhere. that the actions of the imf--to take just one example (there are many) remains a mystery to most americans is to my mind anyway, nothing short of astonishing....the bubble is stronger than it looks.

and this is just one part of the system over which the americans presently preside, the defense of which was a significant element in shaping the iraq war.

so if you want to talk about the consequences of that war, you cannot look only at iraq, or at the mythological framing of iraq that the right has fabricated--you have to look at the system within which the american presently function, the entire neocolonial system, what it enables, what it does not enable, and ask yourself whether that system is functional, whether it is desirable--or, another way, ask yourself whether you think that the systematic exploitation of what we call the 3rd world is justified by the middle-class debt-bubble driven "way of life"....

if it is the case that the propping up of the present order, and the transformation of power arrangements within it to the ADDITIONAL benefit of the united states as the right dreams it, was the motivation behind the iraq debacle, then maybe an american loss there wouldnt be such a bad thing on its own terms--simply because, taking conservative logic and simply standing it on its head, a defeat for the americans in iraq is also a defeat of the neocolonial order for which it stands.

on the other hand, if this is true, a consequence of it would be--would have to be--a reordering of the present political situation. in the longer run, i think this is necessary--in the shorter run, it will probably be unpleasant for the inhabitants of the american ideological bubble, the one that enables folk to imagine that american capitalism has anything to do with "freedom".

since i live here too and am not at all optimistic about the ability of the present system to be coherent about changing its organization--when it is clear that ideologically at least, it cannot even be clear about what is entailed by the reality is operates within now--i am concerned about the consequences of an american defeat as well.

but if i had to say what i wanted--what follows from my political position logically--i would have to say that the existing system must change and if the only way to engender that change lay across defeat in raq then so be it. the problems are structural and require structural change. the present "american way of life" is among the most significant obstacles to it. so maybe that has to change as well.

depends what you want, really: if you want a coherent global system in which the maximum number of people have better lives, the only way to that system would be through the destruction of this one.

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

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite