From: "Gorojovsky" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [L-I] War has hit home.
TERROR
The price of hegemony
By Justin Raimondo
The World Trade Center - monument of the New York
business community, towering over downtown Manhattan
like twin silver phalli pointed at heaven - is but a
pile of smoldering rubble. Crashing down along with
this
symbol of capitalism, modernity, and civilization is
the
overweening hubris of a government - and a people -
who
thought themselves immune. It is the doctrine of
"American exceptionalism," the theory that the US -
blessed by Providence and released from the travails
faced by other nations - is immune, exempt not only
from
the rules that govern and limit the powers of other
nations, but also from history itself. For history -
and
not only history but physics - tells us that for
every
action there is an equal and opposite reaction. No
one
is immune, and this is the meaning of the horrific
events unfolding before our eyes.
Let's reiterate what has happened: in a coordinated
operation
that involved hijacking a plane from Boston, two aircraft
dove
into the World Trade Center, leveling both buildings and
(probably) killing and injuring thousands. Not only that,
but
in Washington, D.C., the Pentagon itself was reportedly
under
attack, with at least one explosion in the area: also the
US
State Department is the scene of yet more high drama, as
it
too is rocked by explosions in the area and evacuated. It
was
a strange sight indeed to see an F-16 jet fighter plane
patrolling the skies above New York City and the
announcer's
voice intoning in a sepulchral voice that the primary
election
scheduled for this morning in New York has been canceled.
Suddenly, Americans wake up one day to find that they are
living in a Third World country. Would anybody be
surprised to
learn that all civil liberties have been suspended, and
martial law declared. What is going on?
What's going on is this: the war is coming home. The war
fought by America and its chief Middle East ally against
the
Palestinian uprising has moved from the street of Gaza to
the
boulevards of the imperial metropolis. What Americans are
facing, now, is what the Israelis face only a daily basis.
For
us, these attacks are a horror of monumental proportions,
something so out of the ordinary that to call it 'unusual'
would be something of an understatement: for the Israelis,
this is a way of life.
The Israelis recently had an election in which they made a
decision: they would rather live this way than give in to
the
Palestinians' demands. They elected Ariel Sharon, an
Israeli
hawk, who vowed to take a tough line against the intifada.
The
Palestinian response has been relentless: a vicious
all-out
war fought by suicide-bombers targeting civilians. They
voted
for it, they knew what they were getting into, and they
have
steeled themselves to endure it. The question that poses
itself almost automatically is: when did we vote for it?
The reappearance of kamikaze planes diving into American
targets just a few days after V-J ("Victory over Japan")
Day
should give us pause: the last time we faced down and beat
such fanaticism was the occasion for a world war in which
the
entire nation was mobilized and militarized, and there was
talk of canceling a presidential election. Are we willing
to
do that again? And here is a sobering thought..
The US mainland was completely unaffected by the last
world
war: millions were killed, but not on our shores. The
closest
they ever came was when the Japanese dropped some hot air
balloons over the state of Washington. But not this time.
In
the age of globalization, a world war means that
everybody's
back yard is a potential battlefield.
A common word we hear in foreign policy circles is
"hegemonism." We stand at the apex of power, and the
French
have even invented a special term for the hubristic
heights of
the American Imperium: they call us the hyperpower. It was
coined to describe a power outside human history, outside
the
ordinary rules and conditions attached to human existence,
a
power without parallel or precedent. We were all about
actions, and not about consequences: unlike the empires of
the
past, America was thought to be exempt from any possible
reaction to its imperial edicts. Now we know it isn't
true:
too bad we had to learn the hard way.
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