Conflict

This article has the overblown title of " The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing," and it’s the Hoover Institution on Marxism, but it’s still interesting. “The Baran-Wallerstein revision of Marxism does provide a new global reformulation of the immiserization thesis. But the locus of this misery, the Third World, does not and cannot provide an adequate objective foundation for a revolutionary struggle against the capitalist system.” I would think an even larger problem is that there would be the need for an organized opposition representing and supported by the exploited, which is far more likely within a country than across the world. Is the identity of a global underclass really more powerful right now than so many religious, political, ethnic, and other identifications? ...

Over at Fafblog, the always insightful Medium Lobster comments on Donald Rumsfeld’s quest for a lighter, cheaper, faster military. “Few outside the White House have truly appreciated the hard work Secretary Rumsfeld has put into transforming America’s military, turning it from a large, cumbersome force slowly bogging itself down in one war after another, to a lighter, faster, smaller, more flammable army capable of losing numerous conflicts simultaneously.”

Fascinating interview by New Scientist with Michael Koubi, former chief interrogator with the Israeli security service Shin Bet, about his career and what he thought of Abu Ghraib. A very self-confident man, but somehow I believe him, except for the parts about there being little “physical pressure.” Somehow I don’t see that holding true in a lot of cases, although I would imagine folks are more susceptible to mental/emotional pressure than we often think. ...

Oh, good. Our administration has protected Iraq, and by extension the world, from the danger of a small Islamic peacekeeping force under the command of the UN. I’m sure our troops are grateful to our government for saving them from a slightly increased likelihood for peace, free elections, and UN involvement. Yep, busy with such problems as this, it is no wonder the administration’s thought capacity has become so dangerously overextended. ...

You know, I can only laud the fact that Saddam Hussein is out of power, but for President Bush to say over and over again that the world is safer now that has happened is to ignore events such as the removal of Iraq’s nuclear weapons research facilities by parties unknown, while we’re nominally in charge.

A recent Spiked article has some interesting things to say about modern terrorist movements and their globalist, as opposed to nationalist, backgrounds. I don’t agree with the main thesis — that Western humanitarian intervention weakened the concept of state sovereignty so much that terrorist movements no longer have nationalist aims — because I don’t think the weakness of the state is a new thing. Internationalism has eroded state sovereignty for quite a long time, but a large part of the weaknesses of the state system are the same ones that it has had all along. (A reliance on national identity for legitimacy, for instance, makes it very hard to fill the entire world with brand-new states, which was the one of the effects of decolonization. Former colony space simply could not remain “empty” of states when the powers of the world were states themselves. After all, with whom do you set trade rules?) ...

“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.” President George W. Bush August 5, 2004 Remarks by the President at the Signing of H.R. 4613, the Defense Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2005

I realize we’re in the middle of fighting Evil, one medium-sized country at a time, but growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I still have a healthy respect for the nuclear weapons issue. (You know, the one that says we’re glad they haven’t been used in a while and we know the probability of their being used approaches 1 every time another country develops them.) From what I recall, as late as 1994 a primary concern of our government was making sure nuclear weapons capability wasn’t spreading around. We didn’t do a great job, but hey, it worked somewhat well for fifty years or so. ...

Interesting article on the confusion concerning the numbers of al-Qaeda terrorists around the world, brought to us by Spiked. It doesn’t seem it is possible to talk about al-Qaeda without bringing up a question that just puzzles me. For a terrorist group with supposedly well-established political aims and members all over the world, doesn’t al-Qaeda seem far more murderous than strategic? In other words, do they really have a plan of how any of their horrific acts are going to accomplish what they say they want? For instance: ...