In the Religion of 100% Americanism, Ignorance is Strength
Posted by Kevin Carson on Jul 3, 2010 in Commentary • 14 commentsBill Kristol, at the Weekly Standard, questions whether a military strike on Iran’s alleged nuclear development program would be as dangerous as everyone seems to think. A limited strike against selected military and terrorist-training targets, he argues, would most likely result in a similarly limited Iranian response. The reason: the rational self-interest of Iran’s leadership.
“It’s unclear… that Iran would want to risk broadening the conflict and creating the prospect of regime decapitation. Iran’s rulers have shown that their preeminent concern is maintaining their grip on power. If U.S. military action is narrowly targeted, and declared to be such, why would Iran’s leaders… want to escalate the conflict, as even one missile attack on a U.S. facility or ally or a blockade of the Strait would obviously do?”
In other words, the Iranian leadership’s likely response is a rational assessment of the results of their own past actions: “This attack is punishment for our reckless policies. Clearly, we must adjust our course of action to avoid such punishment in the future.”
Now consider the reaction among most of the Republican base when Ron Paul, in 2008 GOP primary debates, made a similar assessment of 9-11 as blowback from American adventurism overseas. The howls of outrage were swift, loud, and predictable: “Defeatism!” “Moral equivalence!” “Blame America first!”
Imagine the United States being subjected to a limited Chinese strike against its military forces, aimed at limiting the American government’s ability to intervene overseas and deterring its leadership from adventurism. What seems more likely to you? That the American people would pressure the U.S. government to refrain from further adventures overseas in order to avoid more such attacks, and that the U.S. leadership — obsessed, after all, with holding onto power — would avoid any response that might result in a decapitating second strike? Or that the American people would rally around the flag and the “Commander-in-Chief,” and that the U.S. government would wage total war to punish this totally unjustified foreign aggression?
So Kristol is relying on the assumption that Iran’s leadership and populace are not as pig-brained stupid as those of the United States.
Indeed, if Iran’s leadership is as rationally self-interested as Kristol says, it seems likely that any attempt at acquiring nuclear weapons capability is driven by a supremely rational interest in deterring the United States. Iran — a country with no history of military attacks on its neighbors over the past thirty years — has witnessed first an American-sponsored attrack on itself by one of its neighbors, and then two American attacks on that same neighbor based on trumped-up accusations. Man, I’d be wanting some nukes myself.
Kristol also produces the obligatory, for neocons, quote from Churchill on “appeasement” and “half-measures.” In the neocon template, the “foreign threat” of the week is always Hitler at Munich, and the United States is faced with a choice between Chamberlainian appeasement and Churchillian deterrence and resolve. This neglects the possibility that the leadership of foreign states might see the United States as playing the Hitler role, and themselves as confronted by a choice between appeasement and deterrence.
In the neocon view of the world, the United States is the only country in the world whose people and political leadership should be incapable of rational self-interest. For America, alone among the peoples of the world, rationally considering the consequences of the U.S. government’s foreign policy and adjusting that policy accordingly constitutes “defeatism.”
Apparently it’s never occurred to Kristol that, in the event of an American attack on Iran, the Iranian leadership would see itself as Chamberlain in the Munich scenario, and attempt to punish aggression as harshly as possible in order to deter further attacks — or that the Iranian people would rally around their flag in exactly the same mindlessly uncritical, gullible fashion as their Nascar-attending, Toby Keith-listening counterparts in the U.S.
To be a good American, you must be stupid. If you think, the terrorists have won.
Maybe that’s what Liz Cheney means by “American exceptionalism.”
C4SS (c4ss.org) Research Associate Kevin Carson is a contemporary mutualist author and individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy, Organization Theory: A Libertarian Perspective, and The Homebrew Industrial Revolution: A Low-Overhead Manifesto, all of which are freely available online. Carson has also written for such print publications as The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty and a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and his own Mutualist Blog.
Kevin,
Here's an article that rightly points out a 4th player in all this mess in Saudi Arabia.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jul/2/sa…
There are many elements in the entire mess but IMO the root core of the problem is a battle for supremacy among the the actors of the Abrahamic religions. Shred the myth of Abraham, you shred the underlying support mechanism used to manipulate the masses by the statist actors and as the myth goes that the veil of the temple was rent, so too will the veil of our time be torn from it's mountings!
Statism and Religion are a symbiosis that if you strip aside religion, the state will swiftly fall with it!
[...] In the Religion of 100% Americanism, Ignorance Is Strength by Kevin Carson [...]
Shame on you, Kevin, for picking on the retarded.
Pointing out that Bill Kristol wrote something that is grotesquely stupid, ranks up there with yelling "Spaz!" at someone with cerebral palsy. It's a cheap shot.
We should instead be calling for donations to help society overcome the systemic anosognosia that afflicts some of these Red Sea Pedestrians – who believe so ardently in their self-promotional waffle about "seichel" that they continually make fools of themselves in public pronouncements.
(It's not JUST RSPs that suffer from this condition – although they dominate US public discourse: anybody who votes is likely a sufferer, likewise anybody who reads Keynes or Marx without vomiting).
Kristol is a 'Gott Mit Uns' tribalist moron who – thankfully – works in a dying industry in a failed state: in ten years his name will be in history's dustbin along with the guys who wrote for Pravda back in the old USSR.
I suppose we ought to be grateful that you read Kristol, so that we don't have to. Every time I see his clownish physog I throw up a little bit in my mouth.
Cheerio
GT
The endless American propaganda about "appeasement" and "Munich" itself is based upon a fundamental lie: that the naive British appeased the threat of Nazi Germany.
In point of fact, the British consciously colluded with the Nazis for their own cynical geopolitical reasons.
It's not appeasement. It's criminal collusion. And this casts a more sinister light on the behavior of the British then, if not America today.
IN OUR TIME
The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion
http://www.monthlyreview.org/books/inourtime.php
In addition to Kristol's traditional Israel First stance, which will always take a backseat to America's interest, I have a suspicion that Kristol, like his fellow war mongering neocon friend, Richard Perle, has some sort of financial interest in seeing the US continue to wage war in god forsaken regions of he world.
The whole acessment is correct this is the part of history if you are tired of ruling the world you become lazy and inefficient and that the beggining of an end for that country.
WE find Turkey, Europe in 18-20th century then they leaned to live as civilised nations and the war war is unacceptable except England they are intrigers. This is fine story came a man and gap several slaps on the face of a man and when he started weaping and crying then asked the other man why are weaping and is true for americans as they put a quetion to Muslims why you hate us and don,t follow Amis.
your govt has got to be really stupid after the last jokers.Wake up the live we live regadreless of race or religion as one .Politictices is what is dividing you beautiful people.
Kristal wants to weaken and defeat Iran and or any other country state or entity that does ANYTHING to impede the theft of Palestinian lands… What is good for Jewish thieves is NOT good for America, the world or in fact anyone….. Nuclear armed thieves need to be disarmed, not appeased…
Hear, hear! Kevin, another great one.
Is this the same Kristol of the same right wing faction that has spent much time and effort convincing us all that Iran is a nation full of lunatic, suicidal religious fanatics that are not subject to the usual laws of rational thought?
Wow, I read the first page of Kristol's idiotic plea for war, and was baffled that he thought that the Iranian regime would be afraid of "decapitation". If given the choice of being placed under siege (economic blockade and intermittent aerial bombardment) or fighting back and provoking a full invasion, I think they could rationally choose the later as the safer option.
What's the chance that we could pacify Iran, given our current difficulty pacifying Iraq and Afghanistan? Even the threat of "decapitating" the regime is pretty lame — after all Mohammed Omar still commands the Taliban in Afghanistan.
How can someone get paid for such moronic drivel? (don't bother answering, I know)
This piece by Kristol is not moronic drivel or stupidity, its criminal agitation and it's deadly serious. This man and his ilk need to be stopped otherwise thousands more Americans {not to mention tens/hundreds of thousands Iranians} will die for Globalism and Zionism.
Something the neocons also don’t understand is fourth generation war.
It’s clear that the idea of these “limited interventions” to produce a “rational” response is hypocritical, but the main issue is with the perception that the US armed forces allow the US government to get away with it.
But the thing about rationality is that there can be rational actions to achieve a stupid goal, where the goal is the US Federal Government turning every country into a “democracy”. Even then, I don’t believe the goal as it is more likely the protection of international business interests. I don’t think you can really take anything the neocons produce at face value.
I've delved into the ranks of so-called American Freedom Fighters. There is too much ignorance and assumptions made to prophecy the chess board in the Middle East. They barely understand what is going on in their own country but find the idea of liberating the Middle East more glamorous and romantic than fixing their local problems. Watching the Middle East is escapist theater for Americans much as the movies are. A better and more accurate label for the entire Middle East Political would be "Made in Britain."
Made in Britain?
Saudi Arabia => Yes
Syria => as a reaction to Britain, yes.
Lebanon => as a reaction to Britain, yes.
Palestine => Most definitely Yes.
Israel => Most definitely Yes.
Iraq => Most definitely Yes.
Iran => Most definitely Yes.
One could argue the USA is made in Britain too, but that's a different story. It's a wonder that anyone would spew such vitriolic hate in word, thought, and action against someone they perceive as "enemy" when in fact Britain is responsible for you and your enemy's existence. When I read that Britain was publicly Allied, but privately pro-Hitler (to fight the Soviets) and pro-Nazi (because old line Anglo-Saxon British are just as White Supremacist as Nazis are) in WW2, I wasn't surprised. Perhaps British officials were surprised when it got out of hand, and they were suddenly being V-bombed by their public enemy who was their secret friend. It's a different day and age, and if you look within Britain, there is near anarchy by the youth. They won't have all this old two-faced deceptive garbage anymore. If you want Change, realize that what you are shoveled in the news is puppeteerism by a handful of old men, and that people all share the same wishes, hopes, and aspirations worldwide.