The desire for absolute control

Submitted by Michael (United States), Jul 7, 2008 at 10:04

Jeff-- You're having to go awfully far back to find something with which to refute me. !968? Czechoslovakia? As you know, back then the world was divided into two camps. The US didn't go into Czechoslovakia any more than the USSR would have gone into Vietnam. The two sides agreed to engage only through proxies in third countries. Neither trespassed on the turf of the other.

It's entirely different now. In the current, unipolar world we have invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, for example, with the express purpose of converting these alien cultures, forcibly, to an American directed democracy and an American controlled economy. And we are doing our best to tie every other country on earth to our web of supposedly "free" trade agreements. We do not tolerate opposing ideological centers. (So much so, I might add, that the effort to control them forcibly is exhausting our wealth to the point that we are flirting with bankruptcy.

As with all empires, our enemies may be unable to defeat us but we reserve the capability of defeating ourselves.) Why do you suppose we feel distant second-tier countries like Venezuela or Syria to be so threatening? It's because they presume to be independent, and beyond American control. It has nothing to do with any military threat they might pose to the existence of the US imperium. The very idea would be ludicrous.

Even Iran clearly harbors no aggressive, first-strike intent. For them to initiate a military attack against either Israel or the US would be an act of suicide... whereas their need for a deterrent strike force against some "pre-emptive" attack by the Americans or Israelis is quite obvious. We threaten them because they present a focal point for opposition to the American Way.

My original comment merely went to the parallel between such a position and that of the Islamists, who will not tolerate anyone they see as being "against Islam". The two opposing power nuclei are very similar in their intolerant attitudes toward the Other. Of course, people firmly committed to either side of such an ideological divide are incapable of grasping this point easily. For each, it suffices to say that the deluded fools on the other side are either evil or misguided... whereas they themselves are 100% right. That's why the history of man has been one of ten thousand years of inconclusive wars... with no end yet in sight.

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