File spoon-archives/heidegger.archive/heidegger_2003/heidegger.0312, message 303


From: "bob scheetz" <rscheetz-AT-cboss.com>
Subject: Re: spectacle v truth
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 23:07:56 -0500



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Anthony Crifasi" <crifasi-AT-hotmail.com>
To: <heidegger-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
Sent: Friday, December 19, 2003 9:29 AM
Subject: Re: spectacle v truth


> bob scheetz wrote:
>
> > > If a bunch of people help you move out of your house, and then later
you
> > > reward all those people for helping you, does that mean you're
punishing
> > > everyone else who didn't help you?
> >
> >what bunch? micronesia, malaysia, el salvador, ...? gimme a break.  "the
> >coalition" is a propaganda fiction would have made stalin blush.  the
> >ridiculous brits
> >alone, in their bleary fly-blown thatcher-ite imperial tatters,
> >contributed, albeit a mere fraction, materially;
>
> Thatcher was pro-Bosnian war, and whatever humanitarian reasons there were
> for that war are dwarfed by the mass graves that have already been found
in
> Iraq. Not that for me, humanitarian reasons are enough for war, but it
> exposes ideological hypocricy of a large percentage of the anti-war crowd.

which is all dwarfed by the pentagon meatgrinder in the gulf war, and
dble-dwarfed again by the US led "UN" embargo.
but the balkan thing is still a mystery.  why they picked milosovic out of
that crowd, while chosing to help itzabegavic and tujman, certainly can't be
arrived at thru any humanitarian calculus.

>
> >and, they too have got near
> >disregarded for their pains.  the profiteering (mine and your tax
> >money) has been, thanks to our pecksniffian veep, pretty exclusively the
> >preserve of halliburton and, to a lesser extent, geo schultz's bechtel.
>
> You mean the veep who sold all his halliburton stock years ago?

dick cheney  was no more able to run a corporation than paddy's pig. he was
made ceo of halliburton for one reason, his top tier political power in
pentagon contracting.  for this they agreed to make him one of the barons of
the earth.  in return halliburton expects him for the rest of his life to
sell out his country to it.  when they buy a pol-scum, like the
mafia/masons, it's forever; he's never off the clock



>
> >since niether halliburton nor bechtel contributed to the war effort
either,
> >why should their frank, german, rusky counterparts be considered any less
> >(un)worthy the loot?
>
> Because their frank, german, rusky counterparts tried to actively
undermine
> the effort.

the wolfowitz nss paper adopted by the bush admin conceives a one
super-power world; and explicitly arrogates the right to preventatively
destroy any possible competitor.  the rest, including china btw,of the
permanent members of the UN sec council
asked by the US to ratify this arrangemnt thru the initial concrete instance
of iraq, thereby assenting to their own 2nd class status, understandably
balked; thatcher-ite britain alone was willing to hand over her manhood.
>
> > > And how exactly did the US "set him up" for the '91 gulf war? First of
> >all,
> > > the '91 gulf war was a UN led effort, and it is inconsistent to appeal
> >to
> >UN
> > > judgment in the most recent case but ignore it in the previous case.
> > > Secondly, as I recall, there was the slight issue of an invasion of
> >Kuwait,
> > > which would have almost doubled the percentage of the world's oil
> >reserves
> > > under Hussein's control. Given Hussein's affinity towards invading
when
> >free
> > > to do so (which Iran knew well), it wasn't hard to project the
resulting
> > > Middle East picture a few decades into the future.
> >
> >normally the US would have been happy to go on doing bidness with saddam,
> >as
> >they had with the sha and so many others and continue to do; morality has
> >historically weighted against friendship with washington (Putin's
> >pacification of Grozny makes Halabja look venial, yet you'd never know it
> >from his love affair with our selected cowboy in chief);
>
> Using that as evidence for the much more general conclusion that "morality
> has historically weighted against friendship with washington" is like
using
> the bombing of Dresden as evidence for the general conclusion that
morality
> was weighted in favor of the Nazis.
>
> >but a judgement was
> >made that saddam beyond a certain critical mass was unreliably
subserviant;
> >and so menachim begin in '82, clearly with US approval if not command,
> >foreclosed his nukular prospects; and then the US dble game with iran
> >denying him clear victory, etc., queered the realtionship for good. so a
> >dicision was taken gamble on fresh blood.
>
> There was a damn good reason why the US did not want either the sha or
> Hussein to win an overwhelming victory - the results would have been
> incredibly dangerous either way. Picture either one in a position of
> unchallenged control over Mid East oil, which is exactly what would have
> eventually happened.
>
> >with the end of the war with iran saddam's iraq was exhausted, especially
> >financially; and the price of oil had dropped disasterously for him.  at
> >the
> >1990 opec conference he requested a price and quota strategy to assist
him
> >with debt service.  he had after all saved them, the oil sheiks, thru
> >stanching revolutionary islamic fundamentalism in iran. inexplicably, the
> >kuwaitis,  who should logically have been the one most grateful and
> >willing,
> >not only refused, but insisted on increasing production.
>
> Those sheiks knew very well that Hussein would have had his eyes on their
> country just as much as the sha did, if Hussein's resources had not been
> exhausted by the war. So they weren't under any illusions about his having
> "saved them". Hussein proved them right shortly afterwards.
>
> >not only saddam
> >saw this as willful provocation.  his regime was in immanent danger of
> >financial starvation and kuwait was bearing down even harder.  reasonably
> >he
> >plainly warned them he'd have to break out (obvious parallel with
> >oil/rubber
> >starvation to provoke japan in ww2),
>
> The only reason Japan needed so much oil and rubber in the first place is

> that it had ALREADY been engaged in an all-out war on the Asian mainland
> since 1933. By 1941, Japan's armies already occupied a huge chunk of Asia,
> including Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam and almost a third of China. So it's not
as
> if they were just happily minding their own business when they were
> "provoked"!

agreed, but the pt was regarding the deliberate creation of a pretext for
entry into the war

>
> >mobilizing and called in the US ambassador, April Glaspie, to check it
out
> >with US.  she told him on instruction that washington had no position on
> >arab-arab conflict. reasonably he took this for a green light and
invaded.
> >it was a trap, ....
>
> That is such a stretch of what happened! This is the transcript of the
> meeting between Hussein and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie. - July
> 25, 1990 (Eight days before the August 2, 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait)


> =========================>
> U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - I have direct instructions from President Bush
to
> improve our relations with Iraq. We have considerable sympathy for your
> quest for higher oil prices, the immediate cause of your confrontation
with
> Kuwait. (pause) As you know, I lived here for years and admire your
> extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. We know you need funds. We
> understand that, and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity
to
> rebuild your country. (pause) We can see that you have deployed massive
> numbers of troops in the south. NORMALLY THAT WOULD BE NONE OF OUR
BUSINESS,
> BUT WHEN THIS HAPPENS IN THE CONTEXT OF YOUR THREATS AGAINST KUWAIT, THEN
IT
> WOULD BE REASONABLE FOR US TO BE CONCERNED. For this reason, I have
received
> an instruction to ask you, in the spirit of friendship - not
confrontation -
> regarding your intentions: Why are your troops massed so very close to
> Kuwait's borders?
>
> Saddam Hussein - As you know, for years now I have made every effort to
> reach a settlement on our dispute with Kuwait. There is to be a meeting in
> two days; I am prepared to give negotiations only this one more brief
> chance. When we (the Iraqis) meet (with the Kuwaitis) and we see there is
> hope, then nothing will happen. But if we are unable to find a solution,
> then it will be natural that Iraq will not accept death.
>
> U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - What solutions would be acceptable?
>
> Saddam Hussein - If we could keep the whole of the Shatt al Arab - our
> strategic goal in our war with Iran - we will make concessions (to the
> Kuwaitis). But, if we are forced to choose between keeping half of the
Shatt
> and the whole of Iraq (i.e., in Saddam s view, including Kuwait ) then we
> will give up all of the Shatt to defend our claims on Kuwait to keep the
> whole of Iraq in the shape we wish it to be. What is the United States'
> opinion on this?
>
> U.S. Ambassador Glaspie - We have no opinion on your Arab - Arab
conflicts,
> such as your dispute with Kuwait. Secretary (of State James) Baker has
> directed me to emphasize the instruction, first given to Iraq in the
1960's,
> that the Kuwait issue is not associated with America.
>
> ===============>
> Given Glaspie's explicitly expressed concern in the first paragraph about
> the Iraqi troop deployment on the Kuwait border, obviously the specific
> "dispute with Kuwait" that she expressed "no opinion on" in the last
> paragraph was the long-standing border dispute between Kuwait and Iraq
> (which Hussein was using as political justification for his military
> intentions), NOT the recent actual massing of Iraqi troops! That is the
> specific "Kuwait issue" going back to the "1960's" that she refers to in
the
> last sentence. Conspiracy theorists have completely misinterpreted this
> transcript.

not actually, ...the version above is i believe transcript of her testimony
to sen foreign
relations com; which committee subsequently obtained her actual cables
reporting back her contemporaneous record of the meeting wherein was
strangely absent the bold upper case qualification about concern for kuwaiti
inviolability.  hmmm, ...seem familiar, anthony?

>
> > > Your list of coutries makes it sound like genuine Islam can only be
like
> >the
> > > Islam of OBL and the Taliban and Iran. I hope that's not what you're
> >saying,
> > > because I know many devout Muslims who would take you to task. But we
do
> > > agree about britany and such - I'm not particularly fond of the effect
> > > they've had on Christianity either. But that threat is a lesser danger
> >than
> > > the "Islam" of OBL and the Taliban.
> >
> >you're sure about that, anthony? a deracinated people is a forelorn
> >spectacle, ...only consider the soul-less US, and then add medieval
> >poverty.
> >the pop of afghanistan is overwhelmingly not middle-class, tradition is
> >nearly all the richesse their life has.
>
> The population of afghanistan has overwhelmingly not been middle-class
under
> the Taliban. Maybe now that will begin to change.
>
> >you know of course the weekly standard is thee rupert murdoch neo-con
> >flagship.  this "case closed" article has been disowned by the pentagon,
> >cia, dia,... and subsequently even i think editor bill kristol.  the memo
> >was a product of the straussian office of special plans under douglas
> >feith,
> >charged to provide pretext for war even if none existed.
>
> There was enough pretext for Clinton himself to bomb Bahgdad in 1998 using
> much stronger langauge concerning weapons and evasions of UN inspections.
> Add 9/11 to that already boiling pretext, and I'm not surprised at all
about
> Hussein's fate. The main reason that most of the anti-war intelligentia
are
> anti-war in this case is not that there was no pretext for war, but rather
> for more ideological reasons.

right on both counts, there is foreign policy structural continuity, global
empire/oil/israel,  reagan to bush to clinton to bush2 and all lied
wholesale to jingo the country to war footing and war (better said, cold
blooded slaughter). and secondly, us anti-war types are ideologically
convinced of the moral and at least long-term practical superiority of:
national political-economies, ecological sanity, conservation, and
alternative sources of energy, and jsutice for the palestinians.

thanks,
bob

>
> Anthony Crifasi



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