Prometheus 6   

From TheBlackList

Date: Sun, 04 May 2003 09:25:31 -0700
From: [email protected]
Subject: The LeoCons?

I guess that I should have known the connection between our neocon warrior intellectuals and Leo Strauss sketched out in today's NY Times Week in Review ("A Classicist's Legacy: New Empire Builders," 5/4/03). The writings and attitudes of Leo Strauss were around when I was a student, occasionally dipping into political science as well as political theory, and I found his attitudes as dangerous back then as I do today. Those who cite the classics as their model for ways of coping with political conflict are by definition elitists. Their sources of inspiration from Plato to John Locke are full of contempt for common people, who are viewed as instrumentalities for achieving 'higher' purposes (i.e. that the people who are not educated and advantaged are properly used as cannon fodder to benefit those who control things, hold the wealth and power, etc.). Sadly the soldiers who fought the battles in Iraq on both sides were largely from lower income families -- minorities and others. The same old game is being played that has been run down the ages from the Spartans and Athenians to the Founding Fathers of the U.S. republic (not a democracy until several centuries after its founding). The slog work and fighting of wars is to be done by slaves and plebs. The beneficiaries are to be the prosperous who run things, whatever the forms of government involved.

These characters, then, who cite the classics for their sources of virtue and political inspiration -- and who now project an American empire -- should not surprise us. Rather they should scare the hell out of us! After Afghanistan and Iraq what next? We have in place the world's most powerful military backed by all the weapons of mass destruction that one could wish -- the greatest assemblage of such in the history of mankind. These characters have now ravaged Afghanistan and Iraq and left these two nations devastated. There looks to be no game plan in the works to restore them to good order and their suffering masses in Afghanistan and in Iraq look to be left to their own devices to get their lives back together. They are not going to love America or Americans for our contributions to their misery. Nor will the rest of the globe.

The catch for us empire people -- and we Americans are now all fully implicated in these two messes -- is that we are making ourselves hated, while offering not much in the way of recompense to those whom we have devastated. We had better be prepared for the restoration of the Taliban in Afghanistan, which is apparently now in process, although our media do not disclose much of that except a few nervous glimpses now and again. What next in Iraq?

And we have some hard thinking to do about Israel, now liberated from the threats of Iraq and Syria, but involved in terroristic attacks of its own on those Palestinians over which it runs a cruel and crueler occupation.

I don't think I trust Bill Bennett (big time gambler they say), Wolfowitz, Perle, Cord, Clarence Thomas, Bloom, Kristol and the rest of the Strauss pack even to get Strauss right. These guys are on a power trip backed by American suffering both in public services and lives lost and crippled to fulfill their fantasies. It is called the Will to Power and it is extremely dangerous wherever it is promulgated -- particularly for liberal democracies for which it is a contradiction in terms. One can only play such elitist games by deception and manipulation. Americans particularly don't like to see themselves as bullies. And that is precisely what these characters are billing us for in our New World Order role. It stinks on ice, as they used to say on the Lower East Side. Ed Kent
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts

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posted by Prometheus 6 at 5/5/2003 10:55:26 AM |