:: 1/18/2003 ::

It is important to realize that the current Russomania is only a symptom of the general weakening of the western liberal tradition.

from Orwell's suppressed introduction to animal farm- thank you, Noam

:: phil 01:37 [link] ::

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*** MISGIVINGS AND CRITIQUES OF "OUR FATEFUL CHOICE" ***

Re: Our Fateful Choice (http://www.presentdanger.org/pdf/PrD-OurFatefulChoice.pdf)


Having received my latest "Progressive Response," I learned about your "Our Fateful Choice" document. It is a good piece, expressing many important arguments and positive ideas. Also, it is signed by a number of people for whom I have a great deal of respect--a respect I also have for you and your work. I am pleased that you are issuing the statement, and I hope it has some impact.

Nonetheless, I do not want to add my name to the "Our Fateful Choice" statement. Although I share the statement's abhorrence of the Bush administration's policies, I think it differs from my own views in important ways.

My primary dispute with the statement is that I believe it accepts the Bush administration's framework of defining "terrorists with global reach" as a--perhaps "the"--principal threat to U.S. and global security. In my view, what we call "terrorism" has root causes in the structures of inequality, the poverty and the exploitation that dominate the world economy and in the corresponding harsh inequalities of power--and the arrogant exercise of that power--in international political affairs. The U.S. government and U.S.-based firms, while by no means the sole forces effecting these global problems, have been and are major forces establishing and maintaining the situation that I see at the base of "terrorism." In order to deal with U.S. foreign policy, I believe we need to start from a recognition of this U.S. role in world affairs. I recognize that your statement does list other threats, and you do raise issues of human rights and suggest that economic issues are of some importance. Yet I believe that your focus on the political realm binds you to an approach that downplays, and may in effect ignore, what I see as the root causes of the issues of concern.

Before going further, I should explain why I use the term "terrorism" in quotations, as I do so to underscore my objection to what I see as the failure of your statement to fully confront the role of the U.S. in world affairs. Any reasonable definition of "terrorism" would include the terror that the U.S. government has brought to bear upon peoples around the globe, recently and over the longer term. To speak of "terrorism" without acknowledging the actions of the U.S. government will, I think, lead us to a poor policy response.

In addition, I have some serious misgivings about the way in which your statement portrays U.S. history. The statement implies that the current policy is a major departure from past U.S. policies. While I do not deny that the actions of the Bush administration are especially aggressive and dangerous, I think they depart much less from past policy than you indicate. Certainly the U.S. government has undertaken unilateral, preemptive interventions at many times in the past. In the Middle East, one might point to the U.S. government's role in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in 1953. No, this did not involve full-scale war, but it was certainly a unilateral and preemptive action. In the realm of full-scale war, there is of course Vietnam. The U.S. government's actions there were certainly unilateral, and they were preemptive in the sense that they were undertaken without any threat posed to the United States itself. These examples, of course, are simply part of a long list.

Moreover, in your description of U.S. efforts to establish a new world order in the wake of World War II, I think your focus on the United Nations leads to a distortion of history, a distortion that portrays a much more benign role for the U.S. in world affairs than is justified. My reading of the history of that period suggests that U.S. business and the U.S. government were engaged in a clear and conscious effort to establish their international dominance. The IMF and World Bank were structured in a manner to assure U.S. control and have been used consistently to pursue the international interests of the United States--which has meant the interests of U.S.-based internationally operating firms and corresponding strategic-military interests. I do not think it will do us much good to fail to recognize the reality of U.S. history and paint a misleading picture of our past.

As a consequence of the analysis that I believe is implicit in your statement, you end up in a dispute with the Bush administration that is largely a dispute over strategy, not a dispute over ends and interests. You argue that the Bush people are doing the job of maintaining our security in the wrong way. They should, you maintain, protect us from "terrorism" and do so through "collective security." I do not think a U.S. government, the Bush administration or any other, can do a very good job of protecting us from "terrorism" until its ends and interests are altered. Yes, the government can stop individuals or groups from perpetrating some of the particular horrors that have filled our TV screens in recent years, but, while U.S. political and economic ends and interests remain as they are, I expect that we will continue to get terrible responses and "blowbacks."

So, yes, those people responsible for the September 11 attacks should be brought to justice, but it should not be a selective justice. It should be a justice that also deals with actions taken by U.S. actors and allies. Otherwise it will be simply a "justice" of the powerful. In the realm of the practical, I do not disagree with the particular proposals that you put forth. This is part of what I meant when I said your statement is a good one. But I would be much more comfortable with something more. Even if we recognize that it may not be practical to demand changes in U.S. ends and interests at this time and thus put forth lesser demands, we should at least recognize the roots of the problems.

Again, let me reiterate my view that "Our Fateful Choice" is a good piece, expressing many important arguments and positive ideas. I hope you will take my disagreements in the context of this view.


- Arthur MacEwan arthur.macewan@umb.edu

:: alan 12:10 [link] ::

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