ar, really, you're so very reasonable and logical that you've fallen into the trap of believing everybody thinks like you do!

Interesting; so I've gone from being "smug and stupid" to excessively "reasonable and logical". I don't ask that you change your mind on anything; obviously you hold your opinions because you believe they are right. Can you do the same to others? Can you just assume they are wrong, without speculating on what personality flaw leads to that particular error? People come to a wrong conclusions in all aspects of life; sometimes these do not arise from any particular aspect of their character, but simply from making a mistake.

And Cindy, Saddam may have claimed Gulf War I as a victory. (Actually it was about Gulf War III for him; it was simply the first in which the U.S. was not an ally.) No one in Iraq believed him; they supported him for the same reason Russians in the old Soviet Union supported Stalin in WWII - they were under attack from a deadly enemy. "Sanctions" are too mild a word for what we imposed; Iraq was under siege; in spite of allowing food in, basic neccesiities of life were denied, supported by bombings which kept them from being rebuilt. If we withdrew now, there would some rallying to Saddam. There is a natural tendency to rally to your leader in the case of an attack. But is is also short term; it ends when the emergency ends, and Saddam is deeply, deeply hated. Some of things he is doing in Basra are not making him more deeply loved. Don't just end the invasion; end the siege warfare, and he won't last.

Guarantees - none. But we have no guarantees once we become an occupying army either. My strategic judgement is that risks of peace, even now, are better than the risks of war. And I can't help but feel that fighting a war, without overwhelming evidence that continuing it will lead to better results than stopping it, is still wrong.

There is a natural tendency to rally to your leader in the case of an attack. But is is also short term; it ends when the emergency ends, and Saddam is deeply, deeply hated. Some of things he is doing in Basra are not making him more deeply loved. Don't just end the invasion; end the siege warfare, and he won't last.

This, I want to believe. How, though? If his various special military and police forces aren't taken out, if he's not removed from office, how does that happen? This isn't an argument; I really don't understand. It's not that I envision the Iraqi people rallying to him out of love. I understand the rallying would be motivated by fear of him. So what ends that? If he's left in power with his forces in tact, what puts an end to their fear. Wouldn't the fear be increased if the (arguably) most mighty military force in the world "couldn't" (didn't) take him out? Wouldn't the Iraqi people be more full of despair than ever? And if we did just drop out, and they did manage his fall, who would they "they" be? Would it be a now well fed religious extremist group? Is that better? Or would it be Afghanistan all over again?

Guarantees - none. But we have no guarantees once we become an occupying army either.

Agreed.

My strategic judgement is that risks of peace, even now, are better than the risks of war.

Before it started, I would have agreed with this. Since it's started, this is probably our biggest difference. Although, I think peace is more worth risk, than is war.

And I can't help but feel that fighting a war, without overwhelming evidence that continuing it will lead to better results than stopping it, is still wrong.

Well, since we know it won't stop, (unless/until things go completely, horribly wrong for the coalition), I just hope it's over quickly.

If his various special military and police forces aren't taken out, if he's not removed from office, how does that happen? This isn't an argument; I really don't understand. It's not that I envision the Iraqi people rallying to him out of love. I understand the rallying would be motivated by fear of him. So what ends that? If he's left in power with his forces in tact, what puts an end to their fear.

Here is what I tried, but obviously failed, to make clear. My argument is that Saddam has been kept in power solely through fear of him and his forces. A lot of other dictators in similar circumstances have been overthrown. My contention is that he was kept in power in part through fear of the U.S. during the long siege. People rallied to him, not just now during the invasion, but during the twelve previous years of siege warfare. End the siege, and after the short term boost wears often you only have the fear of him. You no longer have the people rallying to him to support their leader when their country is under attack.

In short my argument is that the sanctions actually kept him in power; without them he would have gone the way of any other dictator who loses two wars in a row. And if we withdraw now, he has the cachet of having actually won a war; but he has been hated for long enough and lost enough previous ones recently that I don't think it would last long.

You still may not agree; but I hope the point is at least clear now.

I think what sanctions have done to the Iraqi people are horrific. I guess I just didn't equate it with siege.

And as to who they would be; the fundamentalist in Iraq are basically a small state supported group - thus without tons of legitamacy. If you had contact with the outside world, a secular opposition would gradually arise from the large secular middle class that still exists there (even if they are no longer economically a middle class).

Or perhaps not; as I said no guarantees. But who are we going to put in charge when we get bored in a year or two? Or are we going to stay as a permanent occupation?

Risks either way.

And I agree that even though we should stop, given that we are not going to stop, both the U.S. and the Iraq people will be better off if the U.S. wins quickly rather than slowly, because more people will die on both sides if we win slowly, and the bad outcomes that follow will be the same. But that does not make it right; I still think that the right thing for the U.S. to do - better than winning either quickly or slowly - is to admit that we were wrong, and withdraw. Winning quickly is just the better way to do the evil and foolish thing we are doing than winning slowly.

Scott Hope is gay and now on Queer as Folk !!

Hah! I was right! Min and I just watched the s3 ep "Homecoming" a few days ago, with Scott Hope, and then tonight we were both squinting at the TV trying to figure out who that kid was, and finally I realized it was him. Oh, I feel all smart now.

Just saw "Conversations with Dead People" tonight. My fucking god, that was an incredible episode.

I do think it's legitimate to have reservations about cultural colonisation in whatever form, and I don't think that it's a simple matter.

Colonialism is no less colonial, imho, for its being waged by Multinational corporations rather than Nations. An awful lot of these Multinationals are based in the US. Identity becomes blurred.

Moreover, Coke and McDonalds are seen as quintissential US icons. In many cases, these are the only two symbols of America that many people can rail against effectively. Mainly because they are so ubiquitous.

In fact, they are so ubiquitous and so American that they have become common synonyms for globalisation, westernisation, and cultural homogeneity. Cultural homogenisation, derogatively termed ‘McDonaldisation’, the ubiquitousness of American cultural brands around the world and the hold they have on popular consciousness, young and old – is a widespread concern. However, these American cultural icons are merely the symbols, the billboards if you will, that, regardless of the individual product or brand they depict, colourfully, cleverly and consciously shout out their raison d’etre, consumerism. It is the underlying foundational belief system of this mass consumer culture, not the form, which poses the more serious threat, as it advocates the ideology of ‘possessive individualism’.

This ideology involves three assumptions. Firstly, the individual is held to be the absolute natural owner of their own capacities, owing nothing to society for them. The essence of the individual is their freedom to use their capacities in the pursuit of satisfaction. Freedom becomes equated with possession. Therefore, everyone is free to better their circumstances, because, at the very least, they own their own capacities. The second premise is that society is an order of free equal individuals related to each other primarily as owners of their own capacities and of what they have produced and accumulated by the use of their capacities. The relation of exchange (market relation) is understood to be the basic relation of society. The third assumption is that politics is held to be a rational mechanism for the protection of property, including capacities. Even life and liberty come under the category of possessions, rather than social rights with correlative duties. Thus, freedom comes to be equated with consumer choice, in that the loosening of social restrictions can actually render social control more effective, because the desires set free usually feed into a greater demand for consumer goods, thereby channelling energy and interest away from changing the social order. People feel they no longer have the power to change their communities or their nation, only to make choices among products. Citizenship itself is replaced by consumption.

Your average Mexican may well want to live the American Dream and still not think America's impact upon their own country has been entirely positive. Many countries feel that way.

... I do think that the ambivalent feelings expressed towards the US in other, wealthier countries have the same underlying reasons.

The idea of Pax Americana began at the end of the Second World War, with the coming of the nuclear age, colonial emancipation, the renewed expansion of trade and investment and the economic rise of North East Asia. This is when international institutions, such as the UN, IMF, and WB, came into being. It was strengthened with the unravelling of the post-war Bretton Woods consensus in the early 1970s, and the subsequent downturn in the world economy, which lead to the rise of neo-liberal or economic rationalist ideology in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This ideology was heavily promoted by the U.S. and the U.K. and spread throughout most OECD countries between the late 1970s and mid 1980s.

The complete dominance of Pax Americana is generally held to have begun in 1989 with the fall of the Soviet communist empire. The years since the end of the Cold War witnessed the emergence of an era of ‘neo-liberal global governance’, an attempt to construct Bush the Elder's New World Order primarily founded on neo-liberal political and economic theory. This theory is fundamentally shaped by the Machiavellian notion that moral considerations should not be allowed to deter the pursuit of self-interest (even in politics), and by Adam Smith’s argument that entrepreneurial individualist self-interest would raise the wealth of the working class automatically, as if by an ‘invisible hand’. The application of these theoretical foundations to the New World Order resulted in a complex network of policies and institutional developments defending and promoting the interests of a coalition of political and economic elites against any opposition or impediment to profit making or the accumulation of capital. The apparent failure of the Soviet command economy meant that the Group of Seven (G7) core capitalist states were in a dominant position, strong enough to pressure Russia and Eastern Europe into following the West’s political and economic agendas for ‘good governance’.

Caroma, that last part is one reason why you can't lump Europe together as a single entity on socio-political and economic decisions.

Most of our Congress came from the private sector ... And as more and more rich guys like Bloomberg get into politics, it's going to get stickier and stickier. The ties will just multiply.

Yes. In the last US Presidential campaign, Bush raised US$193,088,650 and Gore raised US$132,900,252 in campaign funds, the majority of which came from corporations, CEOs and corporate directors. Enron and its CEO Ken Lay were among the largest contributors to Bushs's campaign, 11th and 21st respectively.

So, moonlit, you're telling me that it really is all about voodoo economics?

Okay, voodoo economics and the American false self-denial of the trappings of empire?

Okay, I don't understand economics at all, but what moonlit said sounds plausible.

Kate ... I'm betting Holden telling Buffy about Scott being gay was a nod to Fab's appearances in QaF.

moonlit ... wow, like so many others here, you're scary. :)

One point - don't get hung up on selfproclamation as the defining characteristic of Empire. India was only formally a dominion of the UK following the Mutiny - but was, in fact, controlled utterly by the East India Company 50 years earlier. If you want an instructive and sobering lesson, compare British responses to the Mutiny with US responses since 11/09/01.