Why Bush Said We Can't Win War on Terror

[livius drusus]

...by Ira Chernus

I found this a really lucid analysis, as well as chilling, of course, but I should be used to that combination at this point. From the article:

"Business" and "linkages" are the operative words, as Bush made clear a few weeks later: "We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don't conduct business or people don't shop. Terrorists want to turn the openness of the global economy against itself. We must not let them.. Out of the sorrow of September 11th, I see opportunity to expand our ties of trade." For the Bushies, victory does not mean ending terrorism. It means keeping terrorism contained enough to preserve the linkages of the international corporate economy, so Americans can keep on shopping.

But that's not just Bush's position, needless to say. The Democrats are right there with him when it comes to fostering US economic hegemony even at gunpoint.

That goal won't be up for debate in this campaign season. The Democrats are just as committed to it as the GOP. Just two days after 9/11, Democratic pundit Thomas Friedman explained what the war on terrorism is all about. There is a battle raging throughout the Muslim world, he said, between the modernizers, who accept the dominance of US-style globalization, and the traditionalists who oppose it. The goal of this new war is to break the power of the traditionalists forever.

I've got Clutch's black depression descending now. It's not like I've never heard any of this before, but after the horrors of the RNC and the perpetual fear that Kerry will lose this race, I feel boxed-in by even the best case scenario.

Sigh...

[trendkill]

This is nothing new to me. But I don't find it all that disturbing, perhaps because I've pretty much accepted it as a fact of life. Globalization is scary, no doubt. But it's nearly inevitable. And what is the alternative? Is that really any better? If it's a choice between being ruled by reactionary religion and being ruled by the market, I'll take my chances with the market. At least under the McWorld model, we have a chance of preserving some personal freedoms.

[viscousmemories]

Originally Posted by trendkill

Globalization is scary, no doubt. But it's nearly inevitable. And what is the alternative? Is that really any better?

Globalization in the sense of having a real global economy doesn't scare me as much as how it's currently being realized. Not that I know a lot about it, but there's a lot of interesting discussion on the subject in this thread. It seems like one thing to say globalization is inevitable and another to say that how it's currently being pursued is inevitable. How it's currently being pursued, at least by the IMF, seems to have serious flaws.

[trendkill]

Agreed. It's not so much a choice between globalization and something else as it is how globalization is implemented.