I'm reading a book called State Terrorism and the United States. The US Government really is a despicable creature. The ugliness of US realpolitik makes me more ambivalent about terrorists who use the same logic. When it comes to political realism, does the oppressor define the nature of the politics? The US is perfectly happy to kill civilians if it furthers its own goals. The US will use whatever power it has, as effectively as it can, irrespective of ethics. However, in general, setting out to kill civilians doesn't achieve what it wants. For oppressed groups, perhaps this is not the case, and targeting civilians does further its goals. There have been enough instances of the US aiding and participating in foreign state terrorism and genocide, that I feel comfortable assuming the US would use these methods more directly if it thought it would be effective.
I think I shouldn't be ambivalent about terrorism. It is probably better just to say amoral politics and war are crap, whoever does them.
I agree, the USA is sucky,
It’s scary when you look historically about how much the US has shaped the world through it’s cultural and economic dominance. I saw a film once that made a good point- the USA doesn’t really need to ‘invade’ a country like what was going on in all those world wars. For the US Ait just needs to ‘liberate’ a country from ‘oppressors’ and install a democracy (or some facade of a democracy) with a free market economy. As long as american companies can sell things to a country and buy their resources America doesn’t care who is in charge over there.
After hearing that it made me think of a disease, the free market economy, spreading from host to host! I guess it’s not really that good a parallel but eh…
ps and what’s with Russia these days! That place is totally $%&#ed up.
Miles / 10:37pm / 18 May 2007
We haven’t even agreed if we want a free market in our own country, but we’re quite happy to foist one on other people. I think you’re right when you say that the primary concern to the US is whether it can harness the production of a country. Lenin had a famous theory about that. He thought that the reason capitalism hadn’t self-destructed after the markets in Europe and the US were saturated was because it spilled out into other countries. I’m not sure if I believe capitalism is naive enough for that to happen, but his theory matches the current state of the world pretty well.
Ryan / 10:07am / 19 May 2007