The Power of Nightmares (BBC2 Weds night)

[Jules Bonnot]

There is no need for normative lanugage like freedon fighters and terrorists. They are just rival interest groups. Unfortunatly America needs to preclude the possibility of live and let live in order to shore up the current administrations power.

 

[craner]

"They are just rival interest groups."

Surely <em>this</em> is the real reduction? And, surely, such obfuscation, denial, disinterest, and distancing, is what led us here in the first place? Have you paid any attention to the 90s? If so, have you learnt nothing?

Your whole position is one of supreme detachment. Rival interest groups are not just rival interest groups to those whose fate they determine.

 

[Jules Bonnot]

It is exactly this kind of detachment that is necesscary for a sensible perspective. It is, at least ,certainly the responiblity of our "elected representatives" to adopt this stance. The only way i can understand those who support the current actions of the american goverment, without losing all faith in human sanity, is that they are acting under an emotional cloud. Those who are unable to distance themselves from the emotional aspect of any decision are unlikely to be rational.
Resorting to the claim that those who oppose the "war on terror" are detached amounts to a kind of subjectivist position or failing that religous faith in ones own righteousness. If there was a valid argument for current US policy made from a strictly detached/rational standpoint i would be interested.

 

[craner]

Do you mean to imply that it <em>wasn't</em> a moral, humanitarian, cultural and political tragedy that the Taliban were able to win Afghanistan and subject its population to a crude, brutal formulation of Sharia law enforced by public executions, mutilation, and the expulsion of women from civil society? That it was just the actions of anothe "power interest"?

You mean to assert, I take it, that there can be no moral judgement of the Hussein regime, or jihadis who execute civilians and aid workers, or US and IDF soldiers who execute indiscriminate, collective punishment, because, as the agents and minions of rival power interests, they escape moral law?

Is this your sensible perspective?

Maybe you think that alliances or detente pacts between Hussein or the Taliban or Iran would've been more prudent, for the sake of short-term stability, i.e. the balance of power. Maybe you don't, but it's the logical conclusion of your position.

Your notion of detachment in the context of global politics and your relativistic attitude to "rival power interests" (essentially reducing their real character to nothing, an effective blank cheque for state crime) are more akin to Kissinger than Jules Bonnot.

There is a whole tradition of rational argument that frames contemporary US foreign policy and the Bush Doctrine - it's a foreign policy debate that's been developing in Washington over the last fifty years.

"Detached foreign policy" is simply an oxymoron.

 

[johneffay]

"Detached foreign policy" is simply an oxymoron.

Absolutely. The question that has to be asked of all foreign policies is who they actually serve and why.

Oliver, why is the comparison with Ireland 'pernicious'?

 

[Jules Bonnot]

erm
Detached in the sense of calm and rational, obviously we are all located within interest groups. I am certainly not arguing for some kind of relativism, what american is doing is wrong in absolute terms. The point is that a detached and rational approach is safer i.e in your interests. Wading in there like a demented cowboy alienating and enraging half the planet dont seem too clever to me.
What american is doing is bad for America. I am not asking them to support oppressive states (despite their love for seting them up when it suits them) but rather to mind their own buisness. American foreign policy just keeps fucking everything up at the expense of people all over the world.
Who could seriously maintain that the Iraqis are better off now?
The first thing true "democracy" would vote for in the middle east would be to punish america and second to abolish democracy.
Rumsfeld and his fellow undeads all know this, they are full of shit.
Their are currently 3000 children in texas with no access to health care, one in 3 black men are in some stage of the prison service, elections in the US are known to have been rigged etc etc should we invade america?
No. As Hegel says consciousness cannot be rasied by external forces but must evolve organically within the community. You cannot impose a way of thinking on people they have to develop it themselves. So we should leave the oppressed people all over the world to fight their own battles once their revelutionary/democratic conscioussness has been realised( maybe with some financial and medical help).

 

[craner]

Ok, so let's get this straight, everyone's a rival power interest, except the US, because the US is wrong in absolute terms.

Delivering Afghanistan from Sunni fanatics and terrorism, and leading to its first and fairly successful election was <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>.

Striking out a corrupt, venal, murderous tyranny which was going septic and heading towards explosion, with the intention of installing the rudimentary structures of civil law, was <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>.

Applying hard diplomatic pressure on North Korea and Iran in the attempt to prevent them developing and exporting nuclear technology is <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>. (And forcing Musharraf to flush out A. Khan's labs in Pakistan, must've been wrong too, I guess.)

Encouraging reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>.

Encouraging secular politics in the Middle East is <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>.

Preventing nuclear war between Pakistan and India...that was <em>wrong in absolute terms</em> too, was it?

I take it that you don't support any of these actions or policies because you reject utterly anything the US does, whatever that is?

Don't quote Hegel, read some history, you div.

 

[KaBuT]

If anyone wants a rather hastily assembled home DVD of the three parts of the Power of Nightmares, drop me a PM,
I'd be happy to help.

 

[Jules Bonnot]

Fuck off Craner you delusional death sucker i treat your posts with respect so i would like it returned.
On a serious note i was talking of the invasion of iraq when i spoke of abslute terms.
It is entirly possible that american could inadverty cause some good (not in the iraq case) but that is certainly not the motivation in the examples you give. Anyway it is clear that we are geting nowhere on this but i willl accept your apology at the apocolypse.

 

[gff]

haha one demented cowboy to another!

 

[Greg]

Ok, so let's get this straight, everyone's a rival power interest, except the US, because the US is wrong in absolute terms.

Delivering Afghanistan from Sunni fanatics and terrorism, and leading to its first and fairly successful election was <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>.

Striking out a corrupt, venal, murderous tyranny which was going septic and heading towards explosion, with the intention of installing the rudimentary structures of civil law, was <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>.

Applying hard diplomatic pressure on North Korea and Iran in the attempt to prevent them developing and exporting nuclear technology is <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>. (And forcing Musharraf to flush out A. Khan's labs in Pakistan, must've been wrong too, I guess.)

Encouraging reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>.

Encouraging secular politics in the Middle East is <em>wrong in absolute terms</em>.

Preventing nuclear war between Pakistan and India...that was <em>wrong in absolute terms</em> too, was it?

I take it that you don't support any of these actions or policies because you reject utterly anything the US does, whatever that is?

Don't quote Hegel, read some history, you div.

At the same time it can be argued that the United States will lean towards actions that protect its own interests (as does any State - entrenched or internationalist) . The examples above only serve to highlight US policy as self interest.

The United States had no intention of routing the Taliban prior to 9/11. It was a public policy exercise. As a result a democracy had to be established both to subdue international criticism and because structurally a democratic state lead by a US sympathiser would provide better protection against terrorist harbours. In practice this remains to be seen, we are still to close to the event. For the most part, Afghanistan is still a lawless mass.

Secondly the United States has no interest in the proliferation of nuclear weapons whatsoever. Fair enough, but as nuclear weapons are still the only effective way of strategically striking against the US you can see why they abhor their spread (conventional warfare has long passed to their advantage).

Also the US fears the ability of these weapons to stalemate unilateral foreign policy. The last thing the US hawks want is a situation akin to the Cold War - where a number of nuclear powers can influence US decision-making. Had Iraq built a nuclear device, there almost certainly would have been no "liberation" for the Iraqi people.

Hence the shift to preemptive warfare. If the United States does invade Iran, it will be to stop the building of a WMD (in Iraq that issue was just a smokescreen. The US knew that Saddam had no nuclear capability at the time of invasion).

 

[craner]

Foreign policy <em>is</em> self-interest. It doesn't exist any other way. This goes for invading Iraq purely on oil calculations (which I'm sure nobody still believes was the case) and intervening in Rwanda to uphold and honour the definition of genocide (can nobody see that the Clinton administartion refusing to do anything about Rwanda with the weasle-words "acts of genocide may have occured" was more nefarious and venal than the Bush administration intervening in Afghanistan and Iraq with the pledge to deliver sulf-sustaining democracies on the post-WWII model of Japan and Korea?)

Also, you can't advance this argument without recognising the fundamental shift in Republican foreign policy (the Republicans are, post-Kennedy, America's <em>only</em> foreign policy party) that occured between the Kissinger-Nixon-H.W.Bush-Scowcroft generation and the Cheney-Wolfowitz-W.Bush generation. And that fact that the thing that really affected the neocons, who took effective hold of the Bush Administration only after 9/11, was the late-80s democracy movements and revolutions in Eastern Europe, as well as the personal and political ideas of some of those involved, notably Wolfowitz. (Bosnia was another moment too: they were all calling for intervention to counter Serbain attrocties, and override the arms embargo on Bosnia's muslims, through the Bush and early Clinton administration. There was no oil involved there.)

And since I've mentioned it, that little detail 9/11, which changed the whole dynamic. It's impossible to compare pre-9/11 and post-9/11 US policy on Afghanistan. Post-9/11, W. Bush - and he deserves credit for this - totally flipped the script, on himself as much as anybody else. Which is why Wolfowitz's rhetoric and ideas define the War on Terror: that is supporting democratic reform in tyrannical and totalitarian states is not only in long-term US interest, but also morally right. And that has nothing to do with Evangelical or Crusader zeal, that's to do with post-WWII international human law.

Here's somthing from a very recent <em>Prospect</em> interview with Wolfowitz; he says:

<em>There was a wonderful moment at a conference here in Washington where someone said it's arrogant of us to impose our values on the Arab world, and an Arab got up and said it's arrogant of you to say these are your values because they are universal values.</em>

And by the same token, surely we <em>all</em> abhor the idea of Iran and North Korea obtaining nuclear weapons. Right?

 

[Woebot]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4171213.stm

This programme is being re-screened:

Tuesday 23.20 BBC2

Wednesday 23.20 BBC2

Thursday 23.20 BBC2

 

[Woebot]

like a twat i recorded newsnight by mistake. has anyone managed to record these?

 

[k-punk]

It's impossible to compare pre-9/11 and post-9/11 US policy on Afghanistan.

Yes, but 9/11 signalled a shift in American psychology, not a shift in the geopolitical situation (except that wrought by the US going into rabid resentment mode). Americans had to confront terrorism on their own soil from agents of a foreign power. Gee whizz. It's not that big a deal, the whole of the rest of the world has faced it forever. WoT is the pathetic flailing of a superpower so obesely complacent and self-satisfied that it can't imagine losing, outraged at the realisation that it has. It is not the beginning of a thousand year war, as the neocons no doubt hope, but the beginning of the end of Amerikan hegemony.

Countdown to the subsumption into China.

Here's somthing from a very recent <em>Prospect</em> interview with Wolfowitz; he says:

<em>There was a wonderful moment at a conference here in Washington where someone said it's arrogant of us to impose our values on the Arab world, and an Arab got up and said it's arrogant of you to say these are your values because they are universal values.</em>

What are these 'universal' values? I agree that there are such values, but they are not those of capitalist parliamentarianism or bourgeois utilitarianism (i.e. neo-con values).

And by the same token, surely we <em>all</em> abhor the idea of Iran and North Korea obtaining nuclear weapons. Right?

But that would be straightforward racism, wouldn't it? Since the only nation to have USED nuclear weapons is, wait, let me see, oh, yes, the US.... But it's OK when 'we' level cities because WE are good people. We're good, of course, not because of what we do, but because of who we are, where we were born and what class we belong to. WE are safe, reliable. Not like those oriental savages, with their beliefs in collective rights and the like...

btw, hadn't seen the Power of Nightmares actually till this week. What I found most interesting was the account of Leo Strauss's ideas, which I'd never really been exposed to previously in any depth.

Strauss - at least according to Curtis - seemed to have taken his political theory directly from Ivan Karamazov's Grand Inquisitor. The masses are venal, herd animals that need to be forcefed edifying fictions (such as nationhood, progress etc) in order to give a focus to their lives. The elite need not share these values, they need only encourage their propagation amongst the duped populace.

All of which suggests that the main difference between neo-con Straussians like Wolfowitz and neo-con apologists like Blair and Oliver is that the latter actually BELIEVE in democracy, progress and the superiority of the west, whereas the former only claim to for reasons of expediency. Not sure who is worse, really, the cynics or the innocynics.

 

[craner]

"Yes, but..."

No, but the change in US foreign policy will have greater effects than the shift in US "psychology." That change has (had) a direct effect on global politics. 9/11 brought an underground war out into the open. Or, at least, unleashed it in the full glare of media prime time. It wasn't like the USS Cole, or Nairobi, or the first World Trade Centre bombing had happened in isolation, like freak natural occurances or something. But their subsequent relevance was a massive indictment of US drift during the 90s.

All this is in the shadow of the end of the Cold War. So: there's a vast shift. Clunk. Plonk.

It's also a mistake to think that Islamist ire is aimed squarely at Amerikan Hegemony: it's aimed more at the universal values you agree exist.

But I was wondering which ones you agreed exist, actually.

How do you asign values (say, universal humanitarian values) to capitalist parliamentarianism or bourgeois utilitarianism... it'd be interesting to ask the people who drafted Charter 77: both what they thought then, and what they think now.

Is bourgeois the same as Middle Class now? I should know, just to clarify my existence. Is it worse or better than liberalism, or being a liberal? I know hypocrasy used to be a big defining factor in both of these pejorative categories.

The thing about nuclear weapons has got nothing to do with racism. It has to do with 1. being against nuclear weapons, and 2. not wanting crooked dictatorships and the world's largest State sponsor of terrorism getting their hands on such terrifying things.

Obviously I abhor Rumsfeld's 02 Nuclear Posture Review. It's appalling.

+

The documentary was anything but an in-depth account of Leo Strauss's ideas or method: Curtis has simply given you a crude caricature to work with.

Both of you sucumb to the classic mistake of over-emphasising Leo Strauss. Why not Allan Bloom? Why not Albert Wohlstetter? Why not George Schlutz? Why not people involved with policy making in the Reagan Administration? Or the Nixon one?

If it has to be Strauss, then why not Plato, or Machiavelli, or Hobbes, or Locke? Maybe then at least you'd get around to engaging with Strauss. And, perhaps, effectively countering him.

Incidentally, I know that I'm a worse person than Leo Strauss.

 

[scottdisco]

Oliver:
>The thing about nuclear weapons has got nothing to do with racism. It has to do with 1. being against nuclear weapons, and 2. not wanting >crooked dictatorships and the world's largest State sponsor of terrorism getting their hands on such terrifying things.

that seems pretty sensible to me.

crooked seems a little harsh on the North Korean govt. though Craner - i prefer 'quirky'.
for instance, i'm sure Pyongyang had the best interests of everyone at heart with their recent memorable declaration on hair styles for men...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4157121.stm
...i've not seen the programme, unfortunately, so can't comment further.

 

[turtles]

Hot diggity, I enjoyed reading that post K-punk! I've been trying to tell Oliver something kinda like that for a while now, but you've done a much better job of it.


Anyway, recently reading Safire's editorial (NY times, free registration req'd of course) on Bush's inauguration speech really brought this whole neocon thing into focus for me. If you read it with the right lense, it actually sounds very inspiring and positive. I think this pretty much sums it up:

The change in emphasis was addressed to accommodationists who make "peace" and "the peace process" the No. 1 priority of foreign policy. Others of us - formerly known as hardliners, now called Wilsonian idealists - put freedom first, recalling that the U.S. has often had to go to war to gain and preserve it. Bush makes clear that it is human liberty, not peace, that takes precedence, and that it is tyrants who enslave peoples, start wars and provoke revolution. Thus, the spread of freedom is the prerequisite to world peace.

Hey great! Spread freedom and the world will become more peaceful. Sounds good to me.

But of course, there's actually a whole lot more to it. I think you're right Oliver, to wonder what exactly are these universal values that everyone should have. I think one of the big issues is that the "values" that America is pushing on the rest of the world under the guise of Freedom are not necessarily the values that people around the world really want or need. Political freedom, religious freedom--great. Economic freedom? Doesn't really enter into the picture. And actually political freedom is only relative, confined within the bounds of legitimate politics as set by the US.

I think related to this is the issue of who actually gets to decide what these values are. If the US really was imposing these universal values that everyone had already agreed upon and were totally uncontroversial, then I'm sure the iraqi's would be quite happy. But of course these values are in fact quite controversial, and so there is very much a perceived arrogance about the Americans that they have decided what is good for the world, and now intend to implement it, whether the rest of the world likes it or not. This is the crusade aspect of the WoT, which even if the US was imposing the right values, would still cause problems for people.

Again the case of Indonesia is a usefull reference point here, where soon after the US stopped supporting Suharto he was forced to step down due to intense internal pressures against him, and now they've had successful democratic elections. With far far FAR less death and suffering involved (though there's still plenty of problems there--even without the tsunami).

And of course the final, overarching part of all this is whether you actually believe anything these people say. Whether you believe their high-minded rhetoric, or think that there are other ulterior motives afoot (oil, maintaining economic hegemony, racism, religious fanaticism...). Personally my default position is to not trust politicians unless given solid evidence to the contrary. And given the whole administration's performance in the run up to the iraq war, i think i have plenty of reason NOT to trust them. I really think there was a pretty uniform attempt at deception across the entire gov't there.

Jon Stewart last night adding his small print to Bush's claim to bring liberty to the oppressed people of the world: "Offer void in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan..."

Anyway, i think there's really 3 main points of contention for me with this whole neocon game

1. what kind of world do we actually want to be brought about
2. who should bring about this world and how should it be done (or should we really do anything).
3. whether we should believe any of their rhetoric anyhow.


Lastly, a few parting shots:

It's also a mistake to think that Islamist ire is aimed squarely at Amerikan Hegemony: it's aimed more at the universal values you agree exist.

I'm trying not to read it this way, but are you just essentially repeating the argument "they hate freedom?" which is pretty dumb IMHO.

also, i just can't resist posting this little gem from wolfowitz, from this article :

"I'm more concerned about bringing down our casualties than bringing down our numbers," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said in an interview with PBS television's "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" program. "And it is worth saying that since June 1, there have been more Iraqi police and military killed in action than Americans."

speaks for itself, i think.

 

[scottdisco]

Safire is a complete idiot, it must be said

always angers me whenever he slurs the BBC as some anti-Semitic hotbed...

 

[luka]

i think mark vs oliver is a fight worth staging. hope mark sticks around and responds becasue oliver's questions need to be answered.