Wednesday, May 30, 2007

 

Imperialist Peaceniks

Below is an excerpt from "Becoming Imperialist" by KEVIN PARSNEAU, ARJUN CHOWDHURY and MARK HOFFMAN in CounterPunch, May 24, 2007.
Consider these familiar assertions:
  1. If Donald Rumsfeld had listened to the generals and invaded with more troops, Iraq would be stable today.
  2. If the U.S. had provided security and basic services after the initial invasion, Iraqis would have embraced America's presence and agenda by now.
  3. If Paul Bremer had neither de-Ba'athified nor disbanded the Iraqi army after the invasion, the insurgency would have been manageable or non-existent.
If you agree with any of these claims, you are an unwitting participant in American Imperialism. You criticize the "handling of the war" but you display faith in the capacity of the US to remake the world in its image through military force and administration. Such faith reinforces the logic of imperialist misadventures like Iraq, and paves the way for future ones.
Later, Michigan's own Carl Levin is exposed in all his sickening glory:
Senator Carl Levin (D--Michigan) expressed the "opposition's" view instructively: "America has given the Iraqi people the opportunity to build a new nation at the cost of nearly 3,000 American lives and over twenty thousand wounded. But the American people do not want our valiant troops to get caught in a crossfire between Iraqis if they insist on squandering that opportunity through civil war and sectarian strife"

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