Tariq Ali. The Duel: Pakistan On the Flight Path of American Power (New York: Scribner, 2008)
Reviewed by T. Hatch
During one of the seemingly endless Democratic debates in 2007 when Senator Christopher Dodd opined that General Musharraf “was certainly no Thomas Jefferson” he was firmly in the tradition of U.S. policy towards Pakistan.” Dodd was not complimenting the General for not owning slaves. Rather, he was observing a longstanding continuity of U.S. policy makers backing the military of Pakistan at the expense of that country's chances at genuine democracy and its democratic institutions. That support of the Pakistani military was based on the threat of Soviet expansionism during the Cold War but is now predicated on the “pure fantasy” that there is a jihadi finger ready to squeeze the nuclear trigger.
Ali convincingly places Pakistan's history into a regional context. From the founding of the state which he characterizes as “a big thank-you present to the Muslim League” from the British, to Pakistan's role in the Afghan war against the Soviet Empire in its waning days, to its geopolitical position in the global war on terror, Pakistan suffers from both its propinquity to Afghanistan and its relationship with the United States. Far more of a concern than the jihadists seizing power from the 500,000 man army in Pakistan is the real possibility that by widening the war in Afghanistan (including attacks inside Pakistan itself as proposed by candidate Obama) the sufficient condition is put into place to create a fissure inside the military of Pakistan.
War is about unintended and unforeseen consequences. Operation Enduring Freedom which Ali sees as ensuring that violence and the heroin trade endure is a case in point. An example of the meaty-fisted irony associated with the conduct of war is the fact that the current jihadi manuals being used against NATO and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan were printed at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The manuals which once made the rounds of the refugee camps, when the mujhadeen were seen as plucky freedom fighters, are now lethal reminders of the consequences of what Chalmers Johnson labeled as “blowback.”
This is a useful book that I'll wager is not on the shelves of the public library in Wassila, Alaska anytime soon.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Henry
Andrew J. Bacevich. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008)
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Professor Bacevich's The Limits of Power is a slender and powerful little book that is to the ethic of imperialism what Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class was to conspicuous consumption. Since the end of World War II and the founding of the national security state the federal government in general, and the Executive Branch in particular, have acquired power roughly in the same way as John Belushi piled food on his tray in the cafeteria scene in the film Animal House. Not only has this gluttonous acquisition of power continued unabated but the spectator consent-givers that the people of the United States have become have passively watched while the power grab transpired. They only have themselves to blame.
According to Bacevich, a retired U.S. Army colonel and West Point graduate, that the American people persist in their passivity is because they have been co-opted into a reckless consumerism that both excuses and sees as infinite the exercise U.S. power in the world. We find ourselves in the middle of a permanent and global war on “terrorism” largely because of a moral failing. Clearly this is a losing strategy. “American power has limits and is inadequate to the ambitions to which hubris and sanctimony have given rise.” This system perpetuates itself because the modern imperialist “little war” is not something that intrudes on everyday life. In fact, “...most Americans subscribed to a limited-liability version of patriotism, one that emphasized the display of bumper stickers in preference to shouldering a rucksack.” The President may say we are at war but you couldn't tell it by the behavior of the nation. It is not a choice of guns or butter. The only decision left to be made is how creamy do we want the butter?
In the author's view George W. Bush is to blame for a recklessness in office but in regard to the invasion and occupation of Iraq he is firmly in the tradition of the other emperor-presidents who have preceded him. President Bush is certainly part of the longstanding practice of conviction following self-interest. The Bush ideology consists at its core of the belief that history has a purpose (the triumph of freedom over oppression and evil), the United States embodies the cause of freedom, God has chosen the U.S. to ensure that freedom prevails, and for the American way of life to succeed “freedom” must exist everywhere. Of course this was all to be achieved by the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war . However, God's plan for the U.S. was radically altered when the Bush Doctrine sank on its maiden voyage faster than the Titanic.
Reviewed by T. Hatch
Professor Bacevich's The Limits of Power is a slender and powerful little book that is to the ethic of imperialism what Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class was to conspicuous consumption. Since the end of World War II and the founding of the national security state the federal government in general, and the Executive Branch in particular, have acquired power roughly in the same way as John Belushi piled food on his tray in the cafeteria scene in the film Animal House. Not only has this gluttonous acquisition of power continued unabated but the spectator consent-givers that the people of the United States have become have passively watched while the power grab transpired. They only have themselves to blame.
According to Bacevich, a retired U.S. Army colonel and West Point graduate, that the American people persist in their passivity is because they have been co-opted into a reckless consumerism that both excuses and sees as infinite the exercise U.S. power in the world. We find ourselves in the middle of a permanent and global war on “terrorism” largely because of a moral failing. Clearly this is a losing strategy. “American power has limits and is inadequate to the ambitions to which hubris and sanctimony have given rise.” This system perpetuates itself because the modern imperialist “little war” is not something that intrudes on everyday life. In fact, “...most Americans subscribed to a limited-liability version of patriotism, one that emphasized the display of bumper stickers in preference to shouldering a rucksack.” The President may say we are at war but you couldn't tell it by the behavior of the nation. It is not a choice of guns or butter. The only decision left to be made is how creamy do we want the butter?
In the author's view George W. Bush is to blame for a recklessness in office but in regard to the invasion and occupation of Iraq he is firmly in the tradition of the other emperor-presidents who have preceded him. President Bush is certainly part of the longstanding practice of conviction following self-interest. The Bush ideology consists at its core of the belief that history has a purpose (the triumph of freedom over oppression and evil), the United States embodies the cause of freedom, God has chosen the U.S. to ensure that freedom prevails, and for the American way of life to succeed “freedom” must exist everywhere. Of course this was all to be achieved by the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war . However, God's plan for the U.S. was radically altered when the Bush Doctrine sank on its maiden voyage faster than the Titanic.
The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule
Thomas Frank. The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (New York: Henry Holt
and Company, 2008)
Reviewed by T. Hatch
The Wrecking Crew is essentially an intellectual history dissecting movement conservatism's nihilism and how this translates into the exercise of political power. The “wingers” who descended on Washington D.C. like a biblical plague of locusts beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 have systematically sabotaged the liberal state. By placing those hostile to the project of the liberal state in key positions e.g. lumbermen at the head of the Forestry Service, anti-union zealots at the Department of Labor etc. the wingers have been wildly successful at capturing the state and using it to destroy the loathsome liberalism that has been the source of their “oppression.” The conservative formula for victory is to scatter liberal constituencies hallow out the state, and reward your cronies with the loot.
Following in the tradition of Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Frank documents the “defunding of the left” which he characterizes as “the north star of the conservative project.” It is the story of corrupting lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and right-wing operatives such as Grover Norquist and how they preyed upon the suicidal tendency of liberalism to depend on the fair play of its sworn enemies. Throughout the narrative the leit motif of the interests of business are central and defining to the wingers' cause. All the while the saboteurs, relentlessly advancing a pro business political agenda, adroitly shield themselves with the mantle of libertarianism portraying themselves as merely seeking human freedom. In this respect they took a cue from Milton Friedman who advanced the cause of the freedom sweatshops by repeatedly quoting Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell.
This book is very much the case of “it takes one to know one.” If one views Frank's August 8th interview on Democracy Now he candidly admits to once being a college Republican before his defection. By reading this useful book one develops a greater understanding of how we arrived at the point where we are today in the Bush era where we now have a “market based government.” It remains an open question whether the American liberal state was merely “a forty-year suspension of the market's reign” or not.
and Company, 2008)
Reviewed by T. Hatch
The Wrecking Crew is essentially an intellectual history dissecting movement conservatism's nihilism and how this translates into the exercise of political power. The “wingers” who descended on Washington D.C. like a biblical plague of locusts beginning with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 have systematically sabotaged the liberal state. By placing those hostile to the project of the liberal state in key positions e.g. lumbermen at the head of the Forestry Service, anti-union zealots at the Department of Labor etc. the wingers have been wildly successful at capturing the state and using it to destroy the loathsome liberalism that has been the source of their “oppression.” The conservative formula for victory is to scatter liberal constituencies hallow out the state, and reward your cronies with the loot.
Following in the tradition of Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, Frank documents the “defunding of the left” which he characterizes as “the north star of the conservative project.” It is the story of corrupting lobbyists like Jack Abramoff and right-wing operatives such as Grover Norquist and how they preyed upon the suicidal tendency of liberalism to depend on the fair play of its sworn enemies. Throughout the narrative the leit motif of the interests of business are central and defining to the wingers' cause. All the while the saboteurs, relentlessly advancing a pro business political agenda, adroitly shield themselves with the mantle of libertarianism portraying themselves as merely seeking human freedom. In this respect they took a cue from Milton Friedman who advanced the cause of the freedom sweatshops by repeatedly quoting Thomas Jefferson and George Orwell.
This book is very much the case of “it takes one to know one.” If one views Frank's August 8th interview on Democracy Now he candidly admits to once being a college Republican before his defection. By reading this useful book one develops a greater understanding of how we arrived at the point where we are today in the Bush era where we now have a “market based government.” It remains an open question whether the American liberal state was merely “a forty-year suspension of the market's reign” or not.
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