Reply #12: Not me, not you, not 60% of the country [View All]

But to be something of a downer, there is a thin and inarticulate rationale on which things do carry on.

The Iraq thang is horrible and stupid on its own terms. But in a larger frame, it's a cleanup operation on the Cold War (and maybe much of the Industrial Age and the Agrarian Age) in a lot of respects. It's unfortunate that Iraqis have to pay the price for this.

Saddam Hussein represented a residue of the Stalinism surviving in the world. For the Cold War to be finished off as a historical matter there has to be an end made to all the residual Stalinisms. Different ones fall in different ways- Cuba's ends at Castro's natural death, North Korea will slowly integrate with South Korea, Ukraine's involves the toppling and reinstituting of ever milder degrees, and so on. Iraq's Stalinist regime had to be toppled from the outside, unfortunately.

But the Western side of the Cold War also has to be disassembled politically, the whole set of right wing governments which function as residues of colonialism and imperialism, or obedient to that of other countries. Iraq and its oil wealth and the unsettled power imbalances of the Arabian Gulf drew these governments into the 'Coalition of the Willing'. Iraq is grinding down the perceived relevance and 'strength' of these governments- Spain's has fallen, Italy's and Britain's are in trouble and downward spiral, Australia's isn't doing too well, the long-dominant American right wing is also losing major aspects of its utility or credibility domestically in a permanent way. A lot of smaller countries have already withdrawn and most have mere token contingents there, out of political duress and pressure they're becoming more resistant to every day. The degeneration of this 'Coalition' and the constituent governments is an extremely important outcome of the Iraq affair.

The 'terrorism' bit is more complicated. Despite all the talk, it's not really about the 200 middle class Arab men who hate bad American behavior and oil-based corruption in the Middle East enough to conspire to kill a lot of people. In domestic American politics this is a proxy issue for the negative half of the increasing American relationship to a global society and global economy and need to measure to other societies honestly. It's about ego and defensive provincialism, parochial beliefs, sectarianism, racism, American exceptionalism, even whether global civilization is a good thing if we don't dominate it. The psychology of it revolves around grieving the old, passing, order of the world and paranoia at the new kind. And overcoming paranioa. That's why there's very little issue or interest in the most cosmopolitan parts of American society about 'terrorism' and nothing but indulgence and indolence about 'terrorism' in the most adamantly provincial and barbaric parts of the country.