[Peace-discuss] excerpt from bill lind on afghanistan

[C. G. Estabrook]

The US actually is an oil exporter, and a serious one -- about 1.8 million 
barrels a day.

That's substantially more than the US imports from Saudi Arabia, despite the 
propaganda about "energy independence" and "dependence on Mideast oil" -- which 
the US has never needed for domestic energy, even under the present commercial 
arrangements (i.e., production for profit rather than use).

For all imperialism may be accompanied by popular cultural chauvinism ("The wogs 
begin at Calais"), it's usually had practical if vicious motives. "Influence" -- 
over the international economy, or at least a portion of it -- has been the 
motive of US imperialism since Jefferson's plans for the conquest of Cuba. 
That's why the USG today insists on control of the flow of oil, esp. from the 
Mideast -- not because it's needed in America.

We [considered use] in our generous liberal sentiments are I think far too 
willing to attribute to stupidity what comes from malice. Our government is of 
course finally deeply stupid (and hence sinful*) to prefer hegemony to survival, 
but it goes about it generally rationally (in the Weberian sense of fitting 
means to ends) -- as the Russians did in entering (and leaving) Afghanistan.

___________
*(Aquinas points out that sin is preferring a lesser good to a greater one, 
e.g., the good of sleeping with my neighbor's wife is preferred to the greater 
goods of amity, fidelity, etc.)


E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
> The dollar really may be quite dead as the international reserve currency, 
> and the results will be catastrophic, particularly as related to the purchase
> of oil. We saw last summer poor starving countries exporting foodstuffs
> because of market conditions. Now imagine a condition where US dollars don't
> compete well for oil and the US becomes an oil exporter (except for trade
> barriers forbidding it). I agree that the US is at least as much after the
> flow of oil as influence, but what Lind is calling modernity (up-ending of
> traditional culture) I would call American Imperialism, but it seems that the
> culprits in the imperialism extend beyond the US borders.
> 
> There was an article in the news yesterday about a UN group complaining that
> traditional Afghani law is demeaning to women.  Regardless of one's stand on
> the issue of traditional Afghani law, it should not be hard to understand
> that the Afghans prefer to find their own way and would fight against any
> meddling from the outside.
> 
> The US government (I really want to refrain from saying "we") is very much in
> the same pickle that the Russians got into regarding Afghanistan.  I marvel
> at the stupidity of armies and I must say that either Tolstoy was a genius or
> he was familiar with the works of a genius.
> 
> 
> C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>> Lind buys the propaganda of those he rightly criticizes if he thinks the
>> fight is between "believers in a ... future in which everyone on earth 
>> becomes modern" and "billions of people are willing to fight to the death
>> against modernity" -- unless "modernity" is reduced to meaning "doing what
>> the USG says."  It's closer to right (if still not correct) to say it's a 
>> fight over oil. --CGE
>> 
>> 
>> E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>>> William Lind is a military strategist actually rather opposed to war, 
>>> particularly the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, etc. He writes on 
>>> LewRockwell.com this morning about the folly of the Obama Administrations
>>>  plans for *"**a major, long-term military and civilian program to 
>>> reinvent Afghanistan from one of the most backward, least developed 
>>> nations to a relatively prosperous democratic state."* 
>>> http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind158.html
>>> 
>>> No surprises there.  The most interesting part of Lind's article (to me)
>>> is the conclusion:
>>> 
>>> *...Here we see how little "change" the Obama administration really 
>>> represents. The differences between the neo-liberals and the neo-cons are
>>>  few. Both are militant believers in Brave New World, a Globalist future
>>> in which everyone on earth becomes modern. In the view of these 
>>> ideologues, the fact that billions of people are willing to fight to the
>>> death against modernity is, like the river Pregel, an unimportant
>>> military obstacle. We just need to buy more Predators.*
>>> 
>>> *Meanwhile, the money is running out. The/ ancien//regime/ syndrome looms
>>>  ever larger: we not only maintain but increase foolish foreign 
>>> commitments, at the same time that debt is piling up, those willing to
>>> lend become fewer and we are reduced to debasing the currency. Historians
>>> have seen it all before, many, many times. It never has a happy ending.*
>>> 
>>> *It appears Afghanistan will be the graveyard of yet another empire.*
>>>