Amerikaka (NP?)

[Mike Weaver]

I've been wanting to join in the realtime discussion for weeks, but until 
now have only managed to jot down a few comments. Here's the way I see it. 
Delete now if you are suffering from war fatigue!

America - among other aspects - a geography, a population, a culture, a 
state, an historically situated ideological configuration... The 
accusations of Anti-American are applied by supporters of the state and/or 
culture to their critics as if they, the critics, were agin the population. 
In a previous debate Terrance scorned the late sixties use of 'Amerika', 
yet this was adopted to distinguish the state/ideology from the people, and 
I find it useful here.

Quail:
>This is not to say we should not address the causes, but to
>think that our Middle eastern policies are the main fuel for this
>fire is mistaken, and addressing the issues will take a long, long
>time. Until then, we need to cripple their power to act as much as
>possible.


Trouble is that every rocket that hits Afghanistan recruits more young 
people for the anti-American crusade. Pakistan is being rapidly and 
dangerously polarised, if not already destabilised. This is not a path to 
greater global security. There is no "Until then" which makes sense.

You Americans may have to ask yourself what you want to survive, what you 
want your future to be as a nation. The Amerikan empire (hegemony more 
accurately) is  threatened by an enemy which grows stronger the more it is 
attacked. (Sounds like Rome and the Christians - look who won).


>this was not an infraction of our laws by a citizen of our
>own society. This was an attack by an outside network that has
>actually, years ago, DECLARED WAR ON US. A network that has an
>illegal government in their pocket, numerous weapons, and a land-base.



Government in their pocket? Maybe, but "illegal", what's that got to do 
with anything?
When did the Western powers ever give a fig for legality in defining 
government. Being on our side is what matters.

It is not really a matter of the righteousness of Western morality and the 
superiority of modernity asserting itself against the barbarian hordes. 
There's a dialectic here which won't go away. Morris Berman wrote a piece 
in the Guardian drawing parallels between the decline of Rome and The 
United States current situation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4271398,00.html
The American empire may not have a capital E but it obeys the logic of 
imperial development.

Expand, or be eaten: capitalism and imperialisms' most basic commandment.

When the Soviet Union died the Amerika  lost its Other and now can only eat 
itself. Or put another way, the Marxist dialectic may have failed, but the 
dialectic hasn't. The U.S. middle east policies aren't the fuel, they are 
the spark which sets the dialectic burning along its interface. It is the 
overwhelming assertion of global dominance which is the fuel.

Terrorism tends to occur when the state power is so overwhelming as to 
render popular challenge impotent. America has reached a position of global 
domination without a popular mandate. Amerika is the major component of 
globalising capitalism. That's the backbone of American dominance.
That is what we anti-Amerikans (to greater or lesser degrees) resent and 
resist. Until a positive opposition to capitalism returns to the world 
arena, terror is likely to be a major expression of rage against the 
dominator. The only force capable of suppressing terrorism is a force on 
the same side of dialectic as the terrorists, but a constructive one.

The current attack on terrorism is an attack on a Hydra.  What can it 
achieve but more heads, smaller maybe, but more of them. Yes they declared 
war but it is not a challenge which can be fought militarily.
There are plenty of positive ways out of here, but none of them are short 
term, and none of them are largely military, and all of them involve 
continued globalisation. Not of the corporate kind, but of the 
international co-operation kind.

The American people have to evolve new levels of reason or accept 
increasing levels of insecurity. They have to engage globally with the aim 
of social justice, or (I fear) we have a fraught future agrowing around us. 
The rest of us in the West have to do the same but America must lead in 
social (r)evolution as it has in the economic sphere.

         Islam as Ahab?

The Counterforce as satirised terrorism?

Enough.
I'm going to send this and go back to patching my flame resistant outfit.

Bye for now
Mike