Romans of the Decadence - Couture, Thomas - 1847 - Musée du Louvre, ParisDavid Seaton's News Links
Decadence has been well defined as doing things in a certain way, because you have always done them that way, without really knowing, understanding, or even caring anymore why you do them that way.
People compare the war in Iraq with the war in Vietnam. Iraq is not Vietnam. All Iraq and Vietnam have in common is failure. In Vietnam, where little was really at stake, there was true commitment, the USA gave Vietnam its best shot and failed...
Iraq, however was "planned" more like some "intervention" in Grenada, Panama or Serbia, What Emmanuel Todd calls "theatrical micro-militarism". Shock and awe the natives, shake down the allies... and everything that could go wrong has gone wrong... Massive failure without even the dignity of commitment... In the middle of the most important region in the world.
Again, William Pfaff's marvelous phrase, "You might think the American political class and public is convinced that war is the road to national success, whereas the American experience of war, from the Korean ceasefire to the present day, proves the opposite. " Decadence. Nothing could better define America's "tired whore" run up to war with Iran. The same stories, the same rhetoric.
All this endless toothpaste tube of war seems to run together and smudge in the lead up to war with Iran. In Iraq, America's appetite for this decadent "war of the month" culture has at last become sated to nausea... "Just another mint." It will be quite a spectacle to see such a huge country as America puke up a war on Iran. DS
Zbigniew Brzezinski: A road map out of Iraq - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: The war in Iraq is a historic strategic and moral calamity undertaken under false assumptions. It is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties, as well as some abuses, are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.(...) If the United States continues to be bogged down in protracted, bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and much of the Islamic world. Here, for instance, is a plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran: Iraq fails to meet the benchmarks for progress toward stability set by the Bush administration. This is followed by U.S. accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States blamed on Iran, culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran. This plunges a lonely United States into a spreading and deepening quagmire lasting 20 years or more and eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Indeed, a mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potential expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the decisive ideological struggle of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and Al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack that precipitated U.S. involvement in World War II. This simplistic and demagogic narrative, however, overlooks that the Nazi threat was based on the military power of the most industrially advanced European state and that Stalinism was not only able to mobilize the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism. Al Qaeda is an isolated, fundamentalist aberration. Most Iraqis are engaged in strife not on behalf of an Islamist ideology but because of the U.S. occupation, which destroyed the Iraqi state. Iran, meanwhile, though gaining in regional influence, is hardly a global threat; rather, it is politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that the United States must respond militarily to a wide Islamic threat with Iran at its epicenter is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy. No other country shares the Manichean delusions that the Bush administration so passionately articulates. And the result, sad to say, is growing political isolation of and pervasive popular antagonism toward the United States. READ IT ALL
Decadence has been well defined as doing things in a certain way, because you have always done them that way, without really knowing, understanding, or even caring anymore why you do them that way.
People compare the war in Iraq with the war in Vietnam. Iraq is not Vietnam. All Iraq and Vietnam have in common is failure. In Vietnam, where little was really at stake, there was true commitment, the USA gave Vietnam its best shot and failed...
Iraq, however was "planned" more like some "intervention" in Grenada, Panama or Serbia, What Emmanuel Todd calls "theatrical micro-militarism". Shock and awe the natives, shake down the allies... and everything that could go wrong has gone wrong... Massive failure without even the dignity of commitment... In the middle of the most important region in the world.
Again, William Pfaff's marvelous phrase, "You might think the American political class and public is convinced that war is the road to national success, whereas the American experience of war, from the Korean ceasefire to the present day, proves the opposite. " Decadence. Nothing could better define America's "tired whore" run up to war with Iran. The same stories, the same rhetoric.
All this endless toothpaste tube of war seems to run together and smudge in the lead up to war with Iran. In Iraq, America's appetite for this decadent "war of the month" culture has at last become sated to nausea... "Just another mint." It will be quite a spectacle to see such a huge country as America puke up a war on Iran. DS
Zbigniew Brzezinski: A road map out of Iraq - Los Angeles Times
Abstract: The war in Iraq is a historic strategic and moral calamity undertaken under false assumptions. It is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties, as well as some abuses, are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.(...) If the United States continues to be bogged down in protracted, bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and much of the Islamic world. Here, for instance, is a plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran: Iraq fails to meet the benchmarks for progress toward stability set by the Bush administration. This is followed by U.S. accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the United States blamed on Iran, culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran. This plunges a lonely United States into a spreading and deepening quagmire lasting 20 years or more and eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Indeed, a mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potential expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the decisive ideological struggle of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and Al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack that precipitated U.S. involvement in World War II. This simplistic and demagogic narrative, however, overlooks that the Nazi threat was based on the military power of the most industrially advanced European state and that Stalinism was not only able to mobilize the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism. Al Qaeda is an isolated, fundamentalist aberration. Most Iraqis are engaged in strife not on behalf of an Islamist ideology but because of the U.S. occupation, which destroyed the Iraqi state. Iran, meanwhile, though gaining in regional influence, is hardly a global threat; rather, it is politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that the United States must respond militarily to a wide Islamic threat with Iran at its epicenter is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy. No other country shares the Manichean delusions that the Bush administration so passionately articulates. And the result, sad to say, is growing political isolation of and pervasive popular antagonism toward the United States. READ IT ALL
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