Jim Andrews on Thu, 2 Sep 2004 01:36:30 +0200 (CEST) |
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<nettime> Rudy Giuliani makes the Republican case for George Bush |
the scariest thing i'd heard before listening to the republican convention tonight on tv was thucydides's description of the plague's progress within athens around 430 b.c while the spartans waited outside the city walls to finish them off, should there be anyone left once the plague got through with the athenians. and it was only rudy giuliani, the former mayor of new york, whom i heard! we haven't hear from the terminator yet! giuliani described the necessity to not fight terrorism defensively but to remain on the offense and combat it abroad so that the usa does not have to face it in their cities. if the enemies of the usa obtain weapons of mass destruction and use them on the usa, this will be a much bigger war than it is now. so it is necessary to destroy all terrorist organizations that regard the usa as an enemy. he repeated what bush said earlier: "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." it is a recipe for perpetual warfare. efforts to destroy enemies abroad result not in the eradication of enemy organizations but in birthing yet more enemies because for every enemy they kill, they kill several hundred innocent civilians and provide yet more reason for the young to enlist with the enemy. consequently, the usa is forced into hammering home a message not simply to terrorist organizations but to the population at large of invaded countries: do *not* fuck with us. they have to settle for being feared, not respected. concerning weapons of mass destruction, it seems like the way to prevent people from getting them is to keep tabs on the resources involved in creating them and to dismantle within the usa and elsewhere the manufacture of more of them. it turns out that the weapons inspections in iraq *were* working; iraq had in fact dismantled its WMD programs. giuliani also spoke against the "appeasement of terrorists" practiced "especially in europe". the republicans regard much of europe as appeasers of terrorism; hence their determination to go it alone. but it seems very likely that they cannot go it alone successfully. there needs to be broad international cooperation both for the sake of the usa and the rest of the world. the usa has plunged itself into huge deficits with the bush policy of pre-emptive military action. they cannot keep this up in perpetual warfare while simultaneously creating ten new enemies for every one they assassinate and pre-empting international support by acting unilaterally. the bush administration is plainly not good at--seems barely interested in--forging international cooperation. nor does it seem likely that they would see the wisdom in dismantling WMD programs at home and forging international cooperation toward the goal of having fewer WMD resources to chase around the world in perpetual warfare. is it simply that the genie is out of the bottle and this is what the world is doomed to do forever more? or is there a way to dismantle WMD programs so that fear of them in the hands of enemies does not drive perpetual warfare, whether they are present or not? watching the republican convention tonight, they regard themselves at war with global terrorism in the abstract. they regard themselves as engaged in a war that will continue until all such organizations are stamped out or rendered threatless. they regard it as a necessity for the USA to press on with this, regardless of international opinion, until the last terrorist is dealt with. Which will never happen. They themselves must be dealt with. But they are pressing their case very hard to the public and it is entirely conceivable that the republicans could be re-elected out of fear, and also fear that the democrats are indecisive. It may simply be a matter of bad cop/good cop when it comes to the choice between the current republicans and current democrats--the military industrial complex is at least as powerful as any USA politican--but the world would definitely welcome the good cop at this point, who has professed an interest in starting to rebuild international relations that have suffered so badly under the republicans. ja # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net