On Fri, 29 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: > This presupposes the US intends to rule Afghanistan and Iraq, > which is manifestly false.
Since this chain started by ragging on RAH about it being a _geodesic_ neo-{Khan, con-men} empire, you're both correct - there isn't a conflict between ruling them by proxy and not ruling them directly, assuming that the Commander-in-Chief can get Our Puppet Iraqis to take over ruling their country for us as was supposed to magically happen when we knocked off our previous puppet. It didn't help that the Iraqis have con-men of their own like Ahmad Chalabi telling our con-man how easy it would be (which is what they wanted to hear) and we've not only had to get a new puppet, we've had to do an awful lot more work that we were supposed to.
At 07:24 PM 10/29/2004, J.A. Terranson wrote:
Agreed. Our interest in not in Afghanistan/Iraq per se. Our interest is in ruling the *planet*, rather than any individual pissant player.
I've never been clear how much the neo-con gang (Wolfowitz, Leo Strauss, et al.) desire to give America a cohesive sense of national purpose through empire was because they cared about actually controlling the rest of the world and how much was because they cared about ruling America.
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Bill Stewart [EMAIL PROTECTED]
