[Peace-discuss] Weiss's sentiments

Tue Feb 22 00:22:53 CST 2011

[I'll post this to the list, too, so our colleagues can take a hand, if they 
like: (Scoop) Jacks(on) or better to open. --CGE]

Weiss overestimates the importance of the Obama veto. Consistent with standard 
US policy since Kissinger, the veto probably didn't even cause the lights to 
burn very late in Foggy Bottom. Obama's genius is to find a form of words that 
papers over principled differences and allows the traditional policies to 
continue - if anything, with what Kennedy would have called "more vigor." That's 
been his general approach to the Mideast war, and a fortiori to the Palestinian 
"theater," as he likes to say. He didn't cave: he continued...

The only thing new was the effort that went into the substitute resolution - 
vintage Obama - but when Susan Rice couldn't sell it (would you buy anything 
from this woman?), I think they just shrugged.

The most important factor was not the Israel lobby "...twist[ing] the 
progressive president's [?!] arm." It was Obama's commitment to the traditional 
(for 40+ years) role of Israel in the US configuration of forces to maintain 
control over what the State Department called at the end of WWII "the world's 
greatest material prize" - Mideast energy resources.

And it's clear that control - not access - is the issue. The dirty little secret 
that neither party in the US will admit is that US industry doesn't need Mideast 
energy - even now only perhaps 15% of what we use at home comes form the Mideast 
(mostly Saudi Arabia) - and that could be substituted for. (See Prof. C. John 
Mann of this institution in the Sunday papers on the Keystone XL pipeline from 
Canada.)

Our energy comes from the Atlantic basin (within a Canada-Venezuela-Nigeria 
triangle.) But - when Germany imports 80% of its energy resources, Japan 100%, 
and China is starved for energy - our hand on the spigot, as Zbigniew Brzezinski 
says, gives us a vital advantage - one of the few - over our economic rivals. 
Obama like his predecessors is willing to spend a lot and kill a lot of people 
in order to "maintain the disparity," in George Kennan's famous phrase.

For all the increasing connections between US corporations and Israel - which 
make the WSJ so pro-Israel - it's important to see that the American interest in 
both the Mideast and Israel is geopolitical even more than directly economic. 
Weiss seems to collapse the two when he complains about "the Chomsky view that 
American rigidity in the Middle East is a corporate policy."

The old man in the British Museum pointed out (when he was a young man) that 
"The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common 
affairs of the whole bourgeoisie."  And the common affairs of the whole 
bourgeoisie - corporate class, if you prefer - may not be identical with the 
interests of any one corporation or industry.  (The major oil companies, e.g.,  
seem to have had some trepidation about the invasion of Iraq.)

Chomsky's analysis - which Weiss calls "materialist" - is in fact geopolitical. 
It describes what American planners have been doing at least since the "Grand 
Area Planning" of World War II. And those plans are less driven by passion - 
greed, or something else - than by a certain form of rationality.

Since Weber, we've spoken of one form of rationality that is a mater of fitting 
means to ends, and of another that consists of choosing proper ends or goals.

American Mideast policy is thoroughly rational - and hardly swayed by passion at 
all - in the first sense.  The end - control of energy - is clear; and it is to 
be accomplished (to borrow a phrase) by any means necessary.  Planning is 
discovering what means are necessary.

But in the second sense, American policy is deeply irrational, and Chomsky makes 
that the major theme - announced in the title - of his "Hegemony or Survival" 
(2003).  "America's Quest for Global Dominance" (the subtitle) threatens our 
very survival. Chomsky's analysis - I've seen no better - is certainly not a 
materialism in the sense of a reductionist economism. It's rather an 
institutional analysis, if we recall that the sociologists say that an 
institution is just a patterned way of doing things. And we can certainly make 
mistakes as we try to descry the pattern.

***

There's a good bit more to be said about Weiss' thoughtful and anguished piece - 
e.g., the parallel with slavery is strained at best; the interpretation of the 
Civil War won't hold water (Lincoln hardly "rose by exposing and denouncing that 
conspiracy" - apparently a conspiracy by Republicans and Democrats not to talk 
about slavery!); and the recession of 1980 was far more important in costing 
Carter the presidency than AIPAC and/or the Christian right.

But it's midnight, I'm tired, and it will take at least another martini, 
tomorrow, to continue the commentary...

Regards, CGE

On 2/21/11 9:40 PM, David Green wrote:
> Hi Carl,
> http://mondoweiss.net/2011/02/obamas-dred-scott-decision.html
> FWIW, this is the mess I've been asked to respond to. I'll probably do it some 
> time tomorrow, and any insight/angle in the meantime would be appreciated.
> Thanks for the great martini, etc.
> David
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
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