Re: [A-List] A reply to a rightwing trade unionist

[Rob Schaap <bantam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

G'day Bob,

> Just then, Rumsfeld, staring disconsolately out the window, sees
> salvation approaching in the form of a Boeing 727.....
>
> Problem solved.

The PR moment is but a fleeting one, I think.  It all depends on how long the
popular passions can be maintained (a Christmas atrocity would suit the
project, no doubt) - there's a lot of winding back of residual democracy and
liberal humanism to be done, and one senses mainstream concern is already growing.

> And in the Mid-East, a day or two of jubilation, overtaken by a more
> sober assessment.  "....Oh shit, and us without an air force..."

Wouldn't do 'em any good, Bob.  When Sartre and Fanon were putting their
terrorism-as-resistance-of-the-oppressed case, a Mig 21 was effectively the
equal of a Euro Mirage was the equal of a Yancqui Phantom - nowadays US
avionics, weaponry and sheer numbers are such that no combination of
belligerents could prevail against Uncle Sam in a conventional stoush.  And
you have to have somewhere to land your aircraft - just the sort of targets
the USAF does best (not counting villages and convoys of allied delegates, natch).

> ... this opening scene is as good as it could be for the owners of the world.
> However you slice it , Osamas last production is even more useful to
> the Great Satan than the stellar service he has rendered in the recent
> past....No doubt this is coincidence, blowback, the law of UN-intended
> consequences....

Has anyone here read Chalmers Johnson's *Blowback*?  I haven't, but I have
heard the gent interviewed on the book, and both he and it sound very
worthwhile - from description to necessary but wholly unlikely strategic
prescription (I suspect CJ underestimates the degree to which sustained
belligerence is integral/essential to the US in the moment).  A post-S11
edition is due out early in the new year, anyway.

> And the man who presumably aimed at this result, hoping for a general
> conflagration in the Muslim world, denies the act.Most of the Arab
> street believes that he was not responsible.

Well, it's probably best from the p.o.v. of the perps to keep things confused
- make the North's flailing retaliations as unfocussed, strategically moot,
and morally unconvincing as possible.  If my guesses are valid, it'd all
gradually have to take the form of satanic-infidel-versus-Islam-as-a-whole,
after all.  For the moment, thousands of innocent martyrs would be more
valuable than a few Jihadi dead, doncha think?

> Maybe because they have the same difficulty with the scenario that
> many of us have....namely trying to see how anyone benefits from 9/11 except
> their enemies.

It's a gamble, sure.  But maybe there are two-projects-in-one on the go.
That's what I'm trying to get at.  Within this Huntingtonian "'Infidel-North'
v Islamic-'South'" schema, I suspect there's a "neo-Wahhabist Islam v current
Islamic elites" project afoot.  Maybe killing infidels, and getting infidels
to kill yet more Muslems (on Muslem land), is all about a powerplay *within*
the Islamic world - whereby one sect is playing for hegemony by hardening
popular feeling towards the North, making institutional ties between the
Muslem compradors and governments and the North untenable, and generally
fostering a fear and loathing that might find expression in popular
theo-radicalisation.  Were that the case, something of an agreement of
interests would maintain between the apparent belligerents.  That's quite
scary, I reckon (what, with the implicit self-perpetuating dynamic) - but a
sadly neat fit with the evidence, imho.

> Well. I guess you need a certain amount of luck to rule the world.

Like having an apparent enemy whose interests lie in the same people-ruining
direction as your own?

I gotta stop this speculating about hidden depths - the surface is bad enough ...

A pox on both their houses, anyway.

And a merry and convivial seasonal respite to all,
Rob.