Subject: Re: HAB: obiter dictum
Date: Thu, 07 Mar 2002 14:34:12
<html><div style='background-color:'><DIV>
<P>bob</P>
<P>I was not discounting morality in any way. What I was arguing against was 'moralisation'/moralising. The distinction is difficult to articulate but is nevertheless important. What moralisation does is to veil the phenomenon of power. And what moralisation tries to do away with is struggle and resistence (call it jihad if you like, which literally means struggle). </P>
<P>The basic purpose is to delegetimate struggle, demonise resistence. Capitalism can not stand the possibility of an effective resistence. It tries to incorporate or at least to make it harmless. If not it just destroies it. History of capitalism is history of this ruthlessness which it tries to veil through moralisation.</P>
<P>best regards</P>
<P>ali</P>
<P><BR><BR> </P></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>Ali, thanks for your response.
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>The point regarding the mercenary character of the US effort is exactly right- not just regarding troops, global critique,...control of oil. And not just regarding the "Afghan allies". US is very thin at effective combat troops. The "special forces," literally, mere hundreds, are the only ones willing to use their weapons aggressively to engage and advance on the ground. The rest joined for "professional" considerations in a bargain that did not contemplate anything near so extreme as hazzarding life or limb or even health; and thence, the near total US reliance on bombing. So "terror" and "high-tech, remote bombardment" are in one sense unexceptionable, the logically necessary modalities of the repsective theses of the bloody dialectic.
<DIV></DIV>However, your "merely political", on the nature of the war, puzzles me. Surely, there's a righteousness in a society's desire (1) to control the factors, political-economy, of its material existence,...precedent over the G-7 & clients rapacity?...and (2) much more, the point of the OBL group, its fight for spiritual existence, tradition, preservation of cultural identity,... against the imposition of Western nihilism? Surely the proper name for this latter, is jihad...?
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>bob
<DIV></DIV>-----
<DIV></DIV></div><br clear=all><hr>Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: <a href='http://g.msn.com/1HM105301/11'>Click Here</a><br></html>
--- from list habermas-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005