Absolutely brilliant writing on the current war: A MUST READ!

[GRUNHERZ]

OUR WAR

All I can I say is this is one of the most brilliantly thought out pieces of work on current geopolitics that I have ever had the privelage and delight of reading. This is one for the ages and I think perfectly illustrates both the stupendous magnitude of, and revolutinary nature of the conditions so horrifying brought to light on in our 9/11 world.

Again this is a must read artice for all of us.

[straffo]

link don't work on my end of the world (freedom country you know )

[GRUNHERZ]

Hi straffo.

You can find the article at http://www.trendmacro.com

Look for it on the right menu, the article is titled:

Here's a sweeping and thoughful summary of the "world-historical" turning point thath the war against Iraq represents

[straffo]

thanks it work now ...

but I'll need a whole day to read that article !

[GRUNHERZ]

It is very extensive, but well worth reading.

[davidpt40]

Too long, can someone sumarize it in 4 sentences for me?

[Nash]

Yeah... that was a very interesting read. Thanks for posting it Grun. I especially liked his assesement of the situation at hand, but started to get sketched out by his remedy. All in all it's definitely a worthwhile thing to have a look at if you have the time.

[GRUNHERZ]

Originally posted by davidpt40
Too long, can someone sumarize it in 4 sentences for me?

Dammit just read it....

[Dowding]

Too long, can someone sumarize it in 4 sentences for me?

You mean for the Rush Limburgh generation?

[Nash]

Too long, can someone sumarize it in 4 sentences for me?

uhm...

Islam is living a fantasy, which the West has afforded them.

Without a sense of realism, they are extremely dangerous.

The only way to give them a dose of reality is to knock em dead, right down to punishing the folks who celebrate in the streets at the West's misery.

Wow... did it in three. But it's nuts to summarize something like this in this way... You really oughta have a look at it yourself and draw your own conclusions.

[Hortlund]

I'll give it a shot, but the sentences will be long.

1) There is a new world order emerging where there are new actors on the international stage; previously only nation states used diplomacy, war, trade as means to achieve their aims, these nation states were acting within a logic pattern, and it was easy to hold one nation responsible for its actions, now there are other players too (terrorist organizations).

2) The new threat comes from groups who have utterly failed to create the material and objective conditions within their own societies sufficient to permit them to construct, out of their own resources, the kind of military organization and weaponry that has constituted every previous kind of threat.

(This is an extremely interesting observation from the author. so I will break the 4 sentence rule and elaborate.

The author makes the comparrisson with a man who wishes to build his own home with his own hands. He must come to grips with the recalcitrant properties of wood and gravity: he must learn to discipline his own activities so that he is in fact able to achieve his end. He will come to see that certain things work and that others don't. He will realize that in order to have A, you must first make sure of B. He will be forced to develop a sense of the realistic.

But all of this is lost on the man who simply pays another man to build his home for him. He is free to imagine his dream house, and to indulge in every kind of fantasy. The proper nature of the material need not concern him - gravity doesn't interest him. He makes the plans out of his head and expects them to be fulfilled at his whim.

The arab nations and the terrorist organizations belong in the second category.)

3) If the existence of a nation state is guaranteed by some external authority - whether by the United Nations or the United States - then it means that one of the chief incentives to a realistic policy, both domestic and foreign, has been removed from play; To see this, think back to the old chaotic world in which the law of the jungle operated: here, if a state pursued a domestic or a foreign policy that was too grossly unrealistic, it would inevitably pay the price for doing so - it would be invaded, or annexed, or partitioned - And this meant that the price of any nation state's survival was the cultivation of a heightened sense of realism.

4) The threat facing us - and one of the greatest ever to threaten mankind - is the collision of this collective fantasy world outlined in 1-3 with the horrendous reality of weapons of mass destruction; previous threats were limited to conventional weapons, and that put a logical roof on the threat; 20 guys in a terrorist organization armed with guns can only do so much damage, 20 guys in a terrorist organization armed with nukes...


Or the cut down version.

1) 9-11 showed that the old rules of war and politics are gone forever.

2) Our enemies are not playing by the same rules of realism that we are.

3) We must change the way we fight from the old theory formed by Clausewiz for it no longer applies (due to 1-2).

4) We must prevent the spreading of wmd's at any cost.

[Vermillion]

Long and reads like a college dissertation.  But its very insightful in my opinon.

One sentence in particular, that I thought was key to the arguements is this:

If we are to understand the measure of the present threat that we must realize that we are not fighting a Clausewitzian war, and there are immense dangers ahead of us if we do not squarely face the implications of this fact: they are not playing by the same rules of realism that we are. And it is this that renders so much public debate so historically dated.

[Charon]

Here's the readers digest version:

Israel good, self made:

And the reason for this superiority, by a paradox typical of history, is not American aid or funding, but the fact that the state of Israel has been forced to struggle for every moment of its existence from the very day of its birth - and it is this struggle that has made them into what no assembly of nations can ever bestow - a viable state. And unless the Palestinians as a people can set aside their fantasies of pushing a vastly superior enemy into the sea, instead of seeking out a realistic modus vivendi with him, they may demand a state, and even be "recognized" as a state. But it will exist as a viable entity only by virtue of the liberal conscience - and seemingly inexhaustible forbearance - of the Israeli people.

Palestinainas and other Arabs marginal, artifical somehow different

The modern liberal world system has permitted the growth of power in the hands of those [Arab refrences in following paragraphs] who have not had to cope with reality in order to acquire this power: it has simply been given to them, out of the sense of fair play prevalent among Western liberal societies.

Look how smart I am -- I can say in 4000 words what could be expressed in 500

This gives a sense of Greek tragedy, with its dialectic of hubris and nemesis, to what has been unfolding in the Islamic world.

Lots of self-serving assumptions

Here we have the heart of our historical impasse, and the only way out of it is to cut the Gordian knot. And this is precisely what the current United States administration has elected to do, beginning with its post-9/11 declaration of the Bush doctrine which unapologetically asserts that states sponsoring terrorism are legitimate targets - the first of the basic, and vital, negations of the concept of national self-determination.

Whoa, don't know about that

This doctrine, however, can be only coherently implemented if the U.S. is prepare to negate the other basic principle of the liberal world order, the refusal to use unilateral force, except in those cases of the "straightforward, conventional unprovoked aggression." And this next logical step was taken by the present administration in its declaration of the policy of the pre-emptive strike...

But this in turn, if it is to be carried through coherently, necessitates yet a final negation of the principle of the right of national self-determination: the U.S. must be willing to discard the Clausewitzian goal of making another nation state merely fulfill its political will. It must in fact be prepared to dismantle and reconstruct the other state, if, like Iraq, its behavior poses a threat to the general international system.

What the critics of this policy fail to see is the simple and obvious fact that if any social order is to achieve stability there must be, at the heart of it, a double standard governing the use of violence and force. There must be one agent who is permitted to use force against other agents who are not permitted to use force. The implementation of the fashionable myth that all violence is equally immoral and reprehensible would inevitably result, in a typical dialectical reversal, in the Hobbesian state of universal war.

Every civilized order, precisely in so far as it is a civilized order, relies on such a double standard. The only alternative to this is the frank and candid acceptance of anarchy, the state in which all recourse to violence is equally legitimate. But what Mr. Butler and others fail to realize is that anarchy with clubs and sticks is a much preferable to anarchy with nuclear weapons.

But if this double standard is necessary to avoid inevitable historical catastrophe, it is equally necessary that this standard be imposed by an agent who has the will and the force to do so. Only the United States that can fill this role. It has the force to do so, and it alone has the ability to act alone. A double standard, by its very nature, cannot be imposed by a multi-lateral body; else it quickly ceases to be a double standard.

Make the world safe for the US, or Israel?

Our aim is simple. It is to make the Islamic fantasists respect the dictates of reality. If they wish to compete with us, if they wish even to be our enemies, we will accept that, as we accepted this situation with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But they must be made to accept the basic rules of play - rules that are accepted by the rest of mankind, from the U.S. to Communist China.

Charon

[SLO]

wow...nice read......didn't need all that though....alot of blablabla:rolleyes:

shoulda
coulda
woulda

do you guys actually think the WORLD changed cause YOU got attacked 9/11.....do you actually think your the center of the world...what happens too you happens to everyone.....hmmm.....bullchit


just look at the Jews/Palistinian conflict.....all your answers are there:p

your tryin to set peace between the jew an muslim....yet you sell weapons to the jews.....jews ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE WMD's(under UN).....yet they do....then you ask yourself why do the muslims hate us.....2 face country you are:eek:

[Hortlund]

SLO, try reading it instead of just bashing it. It makes alot of sense. It also answers your "observation" on the two faced side of things.