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June 24, 2005
Raimondo vs. the Neocons, Part 3,792
Here is yet another knockout column from Justin Raimondo, entitled "Iraq: What Price 'Victory'?"
Raimondo once again takes on the neocons (specifically, David Brooks and Max Boot) who continue to insist that the Iraq war is, if not winnable, then not necessarily losable either. We must "stay the course," they say--no matter what the cost.
Here's a sample of Raimondo's polemic, complete with a nice back-to-basics dig at the evil State:
As the battle-hardened veterans of the Iraq war gather in the shadows, piercing our pathetically porous borders and seeping into the multicultural fabric of American society, your tax dollars will have paid for their training. The sheer irony of it could prove lethal. As new 9/11s confirm the CIA's warning – will it be New York again, San Francisco, Chicago, or some suburban mall? – a renewed American militarism will be unleashed to wreak havoc on the world. So the cycle of new wars and new provocations continues unabated, and the future is a vista of mass murder and retaliation as far as the eye can see. Like some giant death machine, pumping and expelling its poisonous breath, breathing in human lives and spitting out fire.
That murderous contraption, as libertarians are well aware, is the State: fueled by looted wealth and the illusions of its citizens, it runs over lives and crushes all that dare stand in its way. Yet it needs constant infusions of legitimacy as it wreaks havoc and devastation, and that is the role of the War Party and its intellectual spokesmen, laptop bombardiers of the Brooks-Boots persuasion. Even as the blowback from an ill-conceived and morally baseless war hits us full in the face, they urge us to soldier on: that's what they get paid for, and these days they're really earning every dime. While the rebels are exacting a huge toll on the nascent Iraqi government and the American casualty rate is on the rise, General Boot informs us that the insurgents are really "weak." After all, they have no Mao, no Ho Chi Minh, no "unifying ideology."
Yet the insurgents don't need any of these things, they don't even need to win a single pitched battle: all they have to do is keep their opponents off balance and avoid losing, while picking up political support from anti-occupation groups in the general population. The Iraqi security forces are thoroughly infiltrated, and that's because there is a "unifying ideology" that transcends religious and political divisions, not limited to the insurgent ranks, and that is opposition to a foreign presence.
Preach it, Justin!
Posted by Mike Tennant at June 24, 2005 09:05 PM
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