Tess wrote:
That strikes me as a weak reason to kill 3000 of your citizens. After all, the planes hitting the towers and pentagon were surely enough? A gas pipeline? Why that one and not all the other potential infrastructure projects? I mean, the cost and benefits are all out of whack here.
I think you need to look at the bigger picture. Try looking at what the neocon foreign policy objectives actually are. They are clearly not limited to individual contracts for Unocal or Haliburton. What we have seen since 9/11 has been the resumption of the Great Game - the battle for American primacy in Eurasia in what can only be described as blatant imperialism.
Given the lacklustre domestic appetite for such foreign adventures, especially since Vietnam, the importance of generating a sense of threat to Americans cannot be understated.
Consider this: in every major conflict over the last century, the US was frequently incapable of carrying public opinion with it without a direct threat to American people (in or out of uniform).
1915: the sinking of the Lusitania.
1941: Pearl Harbour.
1964: The Gulf of Tonkin 'incident'.
If you consider the expectations of the average American following the end of the cold war, I think you'd be hard pressed to find many that anticipated a prolonged war or series of wars overseas.
But here we were barely a decade passed since the collapse of communism being promised a 'war that will not end in our lifetimes'.
I think the weakness of the case for war against Iraq was very tellling - in the sense that it was quite clear that a minority of dissenters was no longer seen as a signficant problem so long as the majority buy into the propagandist vision of the world promulgated since 9/11. Victory is the only justification they felt they needed. Unfortunately the small matter of delivering victory has been problematic, and this is the main reason we've seen something of a retreat in the neocon programme. Not Abu Ghraib, or the lack of WMD.
