Killing: No longer a practical instrument of political domination?

---

It does not require a radical interpretation of the Cold War to understand that the popular movements that frustrated U.S. ambitions during that period were neither products of Soviet policy nor dependent on Soviet ideology for their existence, but were local responses to real economic and political conditions, and that they often turned to the Soviets for assistance in response to extraordinary pressure from the United States. U.S. policy since the end of the Cold War has exacerbated such conditions in many countries, giving new impetus to movements for economic and political independence, and American politicians and media no longer have the Soviet Union to blame.

The choice of Iraq as a target for U.S. military action makes it clear that the Bush administration saw even this weak remnant of Pan-Arab socialist nationalism as a greater obstacle to its ambitions in the Middle East than either the Islamist alternative or the alleged terrorists who continued to launch attacks around the world. The current threats against Syria are in spite of its assistance to the United States following September 11, 2001, which was publicly noted by the C.I.A. and prompted a special thank you visit to Damascus by the C.I.A.'s chief of counter-terrorism. The U.S. attack on its former ally, Iraq, and threats against its counter-terrorism partner, Syria, are consistent with past U.S. policy in other parts of the world, where alternative economic systems, independent alliances or, worst of all, a combination of both have consistently resulted in U.S. intervention, sometimes peaceful or covert, but often overt and violent.

In "The Great Evasion" (1964), William Appleman Williams pointed out that the general assumptions of U.S. policymakers regarding military power were formed during the immediate post-World War II period when the United States briefly held a monopoly on nuclear weapons. During this period, the fact that the U.S. could theoretically obliterate any opponent appeared seductively as a source of ultimate power. This vision of potential but elusive supreme power has haunted U.S. defense policy for 60 years in spite of nuclear proliferation and successive defeats at the hands of "chinks," "gooks," "skinnies" and "hajis." Williams wrote that the successful revolutions against U.S.-backed regimes in China and Cuba "provided an excellent illustration of the way in which the mind concerned with commodities discounts the significance of people. The instruments of power were confused with the sources of power."

The evidence that American instruments of power are not decisive as sources of power has now accumulated for another 40 years since Williams wrote those words. We have seen the consequences of the same confusion that he observed repeated in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Angola, Iran, Lebanon, Somalia, Central America, Colombia and now Iraq, with only very mixed results in many other places around the world. And yet the United States has now embarked on a global policy that wagers the finite resources of our country on a massive arms build-up and relies more overtly than ever before on the threat of punishment by overwhelming military force to pressure small countries to comply with U.S. demands and interests.

OnLine Journal

to be weak allies because of their reluctance to actually kill significant numbers of their own home grown terrorists and their constant efforts to use a combination of xenophobia and extremist Islam to woo hardliners into tolerating the state rather than opposing it..

So if the US tries to kill less of its enemies and have governments like Iraq bring them politically into the fold, then Iraq will just seem like a Shiite-leaning version of Saudi Arabia, far from the "transformative" change that neocons envisioned.

The notion that we, or anybody, can tranform the world to suit ourselves is juvenile and fatuous. We would be better served by a more scrupulous respect for the limits of power, for the importance of international law, and for the rights of other peoples to run their own affairs without interference, so long as they do likewise.

If I went outside and started going around my neighborhood instructing my neighbors in how they ought to run their households and barging through the door when they tried to ignore me, how long do you think I would last? This corporate kleptocracy that we are so entranced with is not a recipe for a long and happy ride.