Re: AUT: RE: antiwar movement

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thiago Oppermann wrote:

>The interesting question, I think, is why this should be so. The US is far
>stronger in relative military terms than any of the colonial powers of the
>19th century, yet it cannot act unilaterally. So what's stopping it?
>Economics? Frowns?

It ain't enough to have the biggest guns. We don't have the colonial
class the Brits did, for one; we're such pampered provincials that
there's almost no one in or near power who knew the first thing about
Iraq. (As Anatol Lieven put it when I interviewed him on my radio
show, the Bush gang wasn't qualified to run even a kebab stand in
Baghdad.) But also the American empire has depended heavily on the
consent of the governed, and the illusion that it's not an empire.
Whenever it tries to rule by pure force, as in Vietnam or now in
Iraq, it loses a lot of its legitimacy.

Doug


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