ON BORROWED TIME by James Wolcott "Pursuing American Interests"

[Jade Fox]

http://www.jameswolcott.com/

Yesterday the face of Colin Powell glared out from the front page of the
Financial Times. He sounded ominous, too, announcing that with his
electoral mandate, the Red King would not be trimming his sails or pulling
back from his foreign policy. That he would continue to be "aggressive" in
pursuing American interests.

<snip>

The truth is that the US can no longer back up the big mouths of its
leaders. If America chooses to go it alone in future conflicts, it'll be because
it has no choice.

This is the argument made in Emmanuel Todd's After the Empire, one of the
most important books of the last few years. Contrary to those Le Monde
intellectuals who see the US as a super-superpower, a hyperpuissance,
Todd, a French demographer and author of a book correctly foreseeing the
fall of the Soviet Union, says the US has become a "big little bully" incapable
of picking on anyone its own size. It makes a show of force attacking the
weak--dirtpoor countries with no air defences, such as Iraq and
Afghanistan--because a "show" is precisely what it is.

<snip>

The US assault on Fallujah is a prime example of what Todd calls "theatrical
micromilitarism." I mean, calling it "Operation Phantom Fury"--it's a sick joke.
What's "phantom" about it? For months the US has been touting this
incursion and publicly built up forces outside the city for weeks, giving the
enemy plenty of time to rig explosives and/or skip town. Billing it as a
"decisive battle"--another fraud. Guerrilla warfare operates on an entirely
different set of rules; as has been oft pointed out, America won every major
battle during Vietnam and still lost. What's unfolding is not a decisive
moment but a ghastly production that trains hellfire on a symbolic target
and "plays well" to American citizens as a flex of muscle, as witness the NY
Post cover today of an American soldier with a cigarette dangling from his
mouth with the headline "Marlboro Men Kick Butt." Civilian casualties, the
destruction of homes and livelihoods, the absence of any significant capture
of insurgent ringleaders, these are secondary to getting good action footage
over which benedictions can be said.

[nine23]

1. This is a great article.

It pretty much summates, to a tee, what the US's "sort-of" allies in the west are thinking these days.

[Jade Fox]

2. Yes, Wolcott is always worth a read.