C-SPAN Special: Thomas P.M. Barnett, Author, "The Pentagon's New

[illbill]

Not enough people saw this! This guy is a smart man!

http://www.realopinion.com/realboards/showthread.php?t=646

[punpirate]

1. Yeah, pretty smart guy...

... but if you listen carefully, all he's doing is supporting the PNAC view of a Pax Americana. His notions are that isolation breeds war and violence, i.e., to be separated from the United States' "rule sets" economically, communicatively, militarily, is dangerous. He makes the fundamental mistake of circular thinking common in the Pentagon for decades--the Pentagon (and the White House) imagines trouble to be in such and such a form, a country or region fits that form, therefore the U.S. imagines the need to fight a war there, which inevitably leads to a war to force the country or region to fit within the U.S.'s conception of its own rules. That's the way Barnett defines "rule sets."

This man is in favor of invading N. Korea to remove Kim Jong Il, just as he was in favor of invading Iraq to rid the country of Saddam Hussein, just as he an advocate of a rapid reaction force capable of fighting many small wars around the globe, which is, in itself, a defining quality of the neo-imperial aims of the Bush administration.

What Barnett is advocating is pretty much everything that Rumsfeld and company have been advocating. What he's been saying within the Pentagon has been very favorably received by the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Is he really that smart? Or has he been able to define terms and strategies only in ways that the Pentagon itself deems acceptable? Part of that "rule set" he describes for the United States includes the right of the U.S. to intervene militarily anywhere in the world where its economic interests might be threatened, or where the U.S. deems it necessary politically.

That's not brilliance. That's yet more ideological smoke and mirrors to cloud and conceal what is, fundamentally, imperial ambitions. Take away the charts and graphs, and ask the essential question--does the U.S. have the right to define the "rule set" for the rest of the world? If you say, yes, as Barnett does, then you approve of what the Bush administration has done economically, communicatively and militarily.

[illbill]

2. Well...

I agree with the fact that we should be imperialistic. I disagree with the B.S. that the administration had to give in order for the public to agree or support it.

Its either them or us, most democrats need to realize that. I'm a bleeding heart liberal, but I find it ignorant for us to want to deny any type of military action to maintain our security interests, when 90%+ of the other countries in the world would not hesitate in the slightest to do the same thing; and not justify it to their citizens.

[librechik]

3. right. I believe you

you sound exactly like every other bleeding heart liberal I ever met.

[illbill]

4. Sarcasm...

is hard to detect on the Internet.

[punpirate]

5. It's okay to be the aggressor...

... because it's us, huh?

And, 90+% haven't done it. Haven't built up their militaries to engage in such empire-building. Haven't acted agressively since WWII. Have chosen to build their own societies.

The ones who have chosen to act aggressively are in trouble. Iraq blew its resources on ten years of war. The Soviet Union is no more because it tried to keep up with us and fight futile wars in the `stans.

The important point here is that whatever you might think about the rectitude of this, history is very explicit about empires--they rise and then fail, usually precipitously. The Third Reich was going to rule the world for a thousand years, right? It lasted twelve. The Soviet Union was broken into pieces, inevitably, in a little over sixty years.

Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union have all taken their shot at empire. None have succeeded, and most are the worse the wear for the effort. That is the United States' fate if it proceeds down that path. And, what's left after that--a banana republic, over-armed, overburdened by debt, individual Constitutional rights buried under the detritus of a national security state.

You think it's right for us to do. I surely don't, if only because history is so instructive in the matter.

Cheers.