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40 comments from readers

redharry
04 September 2008 at 11:29

I see Martin Bright intends to be as 'helpful' to Labour nationally as he was locally in London.

As for his 'analysis', nowhere does Bright propose a single policy change, amusingly he writes of Cameron, 'he has not been challenged by a systematic critique of his policies from the government'. How could there be when Cameron's policies are identical to those of the Government, some of which -war in Iraq, Education privatisation for example - could not have become reality without Tory support in the lobbies.

Because there is no ideological choice between the parties, the electorate will have to judge which is the more competent of the two right-wing parties. To pretend that inserting Milliband will make any difference is laughable - and contradicted by every opinion poll.

This merging of New Labour and Conservatism is well demonstrated by the ideological alliance of the political editor of this once left-wing journal and the Neo-conservatives of the hard-right Policy Exchange.

Can I nominate as 'funniest moment of the week' the incoherent interview Bright gave to BBC News where he tried to explain away Clarke's ego-trip as an effort to save the party. Oh my aching sides.

guido
04 September 2008 at 11:30

"Meanwhile, talk of a rift between Brown's old guard of advisers and the team brought in by his new head of strategy, Stephen Carter, is vastly overstated and everybody is now working together with a united purpose." Oh really? So he won't be demoted, pushed aside or leaving? Are you taking bets?

Beyond New Labour
04 September 2008 at 13:39

Guido probably missed the sentance "Read this series of statements enough times and it begins to gel into something resembling a coherent narrative. Some of it is even true".

I think the last 6 paras are pretty accurate, although I can't see him stepping down without a fight. Even if the men in grey suits come for him. He still blames everything on everyone else.

It is also right to point out that the last landslides, 1997, 1987 and 1983 the defeated parties were never expected to win.

In 1997 they barely had a Majority, but we seem to be heading for a similar result despite having a perfectly healthy one now!

Martin Bright
04 September 2008 at 13:58

Guido -- no, not really. That's the whole point. As Beyond New Labour kindly points out.

madasafish
04 September 2008 at 16:41

I read the article. Well written. but i am confused by the last paragraph..

"Gordon Brown to fall on his sword. If he stood down and allowed a full platform of leadership contenders to come forward, he would go down in history as the man who put his personal vanity and ambition "

Can I have some the hallucinogenic drug you were smoking when you wrote that? For Gordon Brown to resign would be an admission of failure and his being in the wrong.

When has anyone heard Mr Brown admit he is wrong?. He is never wrong. NEVER.

And give up his lifetime dream as a failure?

Since when has he shown ANY awareness of his inability to lead?

You are expecting and admission of failure, acknowledgment he is no up to the job, political suicide and a retirement into ignominy, defeat and misery?

No way. Never. Dream on.

"

He will ONLY leave when he is deposed, or voted out or is too ill.

Morgan097
04 September 2008 at 19:12

The stark truth that you blithely ignore, and over which you have utterly no control, is that that your continued complacent existence is now being determined for you not in Westminster or Whitehall, but on the campaign trail of a former, albeit extraordinary, colony.

writeon
04 September 2008 at 19:57

Gordon Brown's blighted by the fact that he's not really a very good political leader, at least not in the modern sense. He isn't a 'personality politician' like Blair, Bush or Sarkozy. Brown is unlucky, in another era, in a more benign economic climate, he might have lauded as a great PM. Such are history's ironies. One almost feels sorry for him. To want something so much, for so long, to finally achieve ones' lifelong ambition and then have it snatched away, everything turning so sour, so quickly, must be close to unbearable.

raggedyman
04 September 2008 at 20:57

Morg:

Checkmated in Georgia, sinking in Afghanistan, Iraq doing oil deals with the Chinese, Iran still cocking-a-snook & going 'east', Pakistan on the brink of meltdown, half of South America voting for populist anti-US leaders.

Might take a decade or more for US interests to recover from the Bush Administration's 'master plan', eh Morg?

So, Morg, what's next on the neocon to-do list?

I only ask because as vassals[1] of US foreign policy I thought some in these forums might be interested to know.

1. This charge was levelled at the Brits by Charles De Gaulle when they signed up for Polaris; although he [De Gaulle] never forgave us for housing him in Waterloo Place while in exile during the war this charge was no mere matter of sour grapes. And so it is remained so to this day - true vassals of the US imperium.

raggedyman
04 September 2008 at 21:08

Also Morg:

If the US Government were to close a few of its 760 or so military bases that it has peppered around the planet they might be able to help out a few of the million or so ordinary Americans who've had their homes repo'd recently.

itstrueekse
05 September 2008 at 07:53

In what way is the labour party bound to continue? Institutions change, and change, and sometimes die. Charles Clark says 'we will not let that happen' - how does he intend to see that conclusion? Perhaps the labour party should disappear - it has no relevance to modern society in anything but an 'old labour' socialist mode. Being a 'nicer' version of the tories will never work again, if only because it was never true, anyway.

Charles, the country does not want you - can't you see that?

Morgan097
05 September 2008 at 11:59

An' a fine top o' th' mornin' t' you, too, raggy, me boy,

R: Checkmated in Georgia, sinking in Afghanistan, Iraq doing oil deals with the Chinese, Iran still cocking-a-snook & going 'east', Pakistan on the brink of meltdown, half of South America voting for populist anti-US leaders.

M: Let us turn for guidance to either of two alternatives provided by the American philosopher Johnny Mercer (screw Harvard bores James and Santayana):

#1 [raggy Choice]:

"Jeepers Creepers!"

#2 [Morgie Choice]:

"(To illustrate his last remark

Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark

What did they do

Just when everything looked so dark)

"Man, they said we better

Accentuate the positive

Eliminate the negative

Latch on to the affirmative

Don't mess with Mister In-Between

No, do not mess with Mister In-Between."

M: raggy, the problems you cite are insignificant compared to what our nations have successfully overcome in just the last hundred years, not to be entertained in the same breath with the Great Depression, World Wars I and II, the Cold War, and Jimmy Carter.

R: Might take a decade or more for US interests to recover from the Bush Administration's 'master plan', eh Morg?

M: In the words of yet another great American, Louis Armstrong (as sung just before Diana Rigg goes to her reward in the film version of OHMSS):

"We have all the time in the world."

R: So, Morg, what's next on the neocon to-do list?

M: Get McCain elected!

R: I only ask because as vassals[...] of US foreign policy I thought some in these forums might be interested to know.

M: Under no circumstances are you in any context to refer to yourself as a slave or underling, raggy. Let others "in these forums" spit out whatever venom or idiocy with which they choose to demean themselves, but regardless of your politics or philosophy, remember one thing: many, many died to make you a free man.

Or, as Rommel would proclaim (paraphrasing McGoohan in The Prisoner):

"I am not a shaving brush;

I am a free badger!"

And the less said about consumate ingrate de Gaulle, the better.

Morgan097
05 September 2008 at 12:50

And raggy,

R: Also Morg: If the US Government were to close a few of its 760 or so military bases that it has peppered around the planet they might be able to help out a few of the million or so ordinary Americans who've had their homes repo'd recently.

M: Without those dreadful US military bases in such outposts as South Korea, West Germany, and Japan, we might not now be pontificating upon the niceties of international etiquette, and instead be discussing whether to name our firstborns Ivan or Joseph.

raggedyman
05 September 2008 at 13:14

Morg:

It is gratifying to see you in such good fettle Morg.

And thanks for the salutation.

As usual I think your labouring under more than just a few misapprehensions.

Here are a few pointers:

a) I didn't say we were 'vassals' in general [although this is a worthy discussion topic in itself] but that we were vassals of/to US foreign policy. This is a point hardly worth debating - much of the British Establishment including the FO and the MOD thought the Iraq Caper was entirely barking from beginning to, as yet, murky end. However the fact that they kept stum and went along with it anyway makes the point about British strategic/sovereign vassalage to US interests beyond question. As Roger Alton, editor of the Observer said at the time in the run up to the Iraq invasion - 'we must stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans'.

If the British people knew how little choice we had they might be more than a little chastened.

Time:

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,

Time held me green and dying

Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Freedom is a tricky concept for there is a negative freedom - the freedom from or the freedom to, that is the absence of restriction or regulation that constrains and there is a positive freedom or the enabling freedom that enables people to do things, to illustrate, a man on a desert island is completely free of regulation but free to do what? A boat would be an enabling freedom....

Thus a poor man may be free in a sense that is practically meaningless.

Palin: I have to admire McCain's team's choice here perfect blend of pulchritude, academia, and religious zeal - will it be enough to sucker the American people for a third time. Probably.

I sense many are praying not over here though.

On the IHT website there is an interesting piece on the Chinese Central Bank that has bought heavily into the American bond market - to the tune of a trillion dollars or. in military terms. around 200 aircraft carriers - bonds that now look worthless [they are the biggest single holder of Freddie & Fannie's mortgage-backed debt amounting to $340 billion]. The Chinese are understandably miffed - they seem to think they are victims of a currency war. If we have a new cold war cheerily accompanied by its attendant proxy wars mostly third world-based then there will be no overarching ideology to blame it on this time.

We must conclude that war IS business carried on by other means.

b) there is no b).

raggedyman
05 September 2008 at 13:26

And Morg:

'..and we might not now..'

is the grossest most egregious form of counterfactualism not worthy of serious debate and I am gob-smacked that a man of your attributes and obvious breeding should stoop so low. It doesn't even warrant an accusation of fallacious reasoning and flawed argumentation so blatant and obvious a ploy as it is. Please Morg don't destroy my last great illusion.

I might have to return to the Guardian's CIF in desperation.

Morgan097
05 September 2008 at 14:59

raggy,

R: If the British people knew how little choice we had they might be more than a little chastened.

M: If the British people knew how little choice they had, they might breathe a sigh of relief. Ya really prefer a Stalin-worshipping Baathist butcher with his nuclear-armed thumb on the world's oil supply to what could become the first true pro-western Arab democracy? Sanctions were already crumbling, and would surely soon have dissolved altogether had the froggies, krauts, russkies, and Peking duckies had their way. Chirac, Putin and Khan would then have strangled each other to win the lucrative new Saddamite nuclear contracts. Then, the pristine British trots would be screaming bloody murder that they couldn't pay their heating bills, and blaming [who else?] the gutless, paper tiger Americans for the catastrophic new Iraqi nuclear blackmail.

R: Freedom is a tricky concept for there is a negative freedom - the freedom from or the freedom to, that is the absence of restriction or regulation that constrains and there is a positive freedom or the enabling freedom that enables people to do things, to illustrate, a man on a desert island is completely free of regulation but free to do what? A boat would be an enabling freedom.... Thus a poor man may be free in a sense that is practically meaningless.

M: But raggy, open your eyes. Never before in the history of mankind has there been a society so free from want or fear, where everyman can realistically aspire to health, wealth, happiness, success, fulfillment, and a bar bill from Annabel's for his badger.

R: Palin: I have to admire McCain's team's choice here perfect blend of pulchritude, academia, and religious zeal - will it be enough to sucker the American people for a third time. Probably.

M: Although I disagree with Palin on her unrealistically rigid stance on abortion, and am wary about her lack of foreign policy experience, she's rapidly growing on me, and could turn out to be an inspired choice.

R: On the IHT website there is an interesting piece on the Chinese Central Bank that has bought heavily into the American bond market - to the tune of a trillion dollars or. in military terms. around 200 aircraft carriers - bonds that now look worthless [they are the biggest single holder of Freddie & Fannie's mortgage-backed debt amounting to $340 billion]. The Chinese are understandably miffed - they seem to think they are victims of a currency war. We must conclude that war IS business carried on by other means.

M: You're just unhappy that the celestials failed to park their loot in The City.

R: b) there is no b).

M: Yeah, raggy, but there's also no Santa Claus. So count your many blessings, and be grateful to God that ya still got a benevolent Uncle Sam.

R: '..and we might not now..' is the grossest most egregious form of counterfactualism not worthy of serious debate. Please Morg don't destroy my last great illusion.

M: Far be it for Morgie to be the one to destroy your last great illusion, me boy.

But there might still be one or two of the systematically

Russian raped hundreds of thousands of German women and girls who might offer you a gentle word of contradiction.

Morgan097
05 September 2008 at 17:53

And raggy,

The Soviets had no need to literally occupy Vegas. By the mid-'60s, their Weltanschauung had already pervaded most American campuses, and before long, their ideological soulmates would become the tenured professorial radicals of today.

As to the necessity for projection of US military power overseas, before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the USSR was in the final preparatory stages of launching a massive invasion of the Japanese home islands, and important elements in the upper Soviet military hierarchy indeed argued for a 1945 invasion of western Europe. Furthermore, without the American tripwire in South Korea, the delusional lunatics in Pyongyang would have almost certainly again been tempted to recapture Seoul.

raggedyman
05 September 2008 at 21:38

It strikes me Morg that you have the publicist's knack for theatrical hyperbole - but this is only to be expected from someone who has sojourned for far too long within the sumptuous seductions not to say patrician salaciousness of Annabel's.

The language you deploy leaves out the 'real' ordinary people who are the foundation of this sweeping tapestry - they are the invisibles as is their suffering.

In speaking of the ruling-elites whose decision-making often consigned thousands to a barbarous death as in the US invasion of Cambodia in 1971:

The answer to that question begins with a basic intellectual approach which views foreign policy as a lifeless, bloodless set of abstractions. "Nations," "interests," "influence," "prestige"—all are disembodied and dehumanized terms which encourage easy inattention to the real people whose lives our decisions affect or even end.

This is the language of the far removed - the elites, the ruling classes, the policymakers. It is a language that strips people of their humanity. It removes human suffering and human misery and replaces it with bloodless sllde-rulers and cold statistics.

Undoubtedly the worst abominations have been committed by bureaucrats not soldiers.

Morgan097
05 September 2008 at 23:34

raggy,

You're a wry, humorous, intelligent man, constantly in pursuit of both the light and the fight. You clearly deserve your own Emma Peel both to get you through the night and to dispose of your annoying brother.

R: It strikes me Morg that you have the publicist's knack for theatrical hyperbole - but this is only to be expected from someone who has sojourned for far too long within the sumptuous seductions not to say patrician salaciousness of Annabel's.

M: Thanks, raggy, but it's the badger, not I, wrestling shamelessly between a half-naked Keira Knightley and Scarlett Johansson on the cover of The Rolling Stone.

R: The language you deploy leaves out the 'real' ordinary people who are the foundation of this sweeping tapestry - they are the invisibles as is their suffering.

M: Beware him that love mankind but know not man.

It was you who brought to life the fictitious IDF grunt whose imaginary adherence to some recondite passage in Deuteronomy supposedly compelled him to commit unspeakable atrocities.

Ecce homo, raggy. You may have yourself become the very elitist you chastize.

R: The answer to that question begins with a basic intellectual approach which views foreign policy as a lifeless, bloodless set of abstractions.

M: Actually, raggy, during the early hours of May 5th 1970 inside a small Langdell Hall office, I unexpectedly found myself motivating a small coterie of fellow HLS students to lead the Law School out on strike to protest Nixon's Cambodian incursion. The strike did indeed subsequently occur.

R: This is the language of the far removed - the elites, the ruling classes, the policymakers. It is a language that strips people of their humanity. It removes human suffering and human misery and replaces it with bloodless sllde-rulers and cold statistics.

M: You're perfectly describing the Khmer Rouge, Ho and the VC , raggy, certainly not an LBJ who agonized over every minute military decision in order to "do the right thing."

R: Undoubtedly the worst abominations have been committed by bureaucrats not soldiers.

M: I wouldn't know about that.

BegbiesEvilTwin
06 September 2008 at 00:08

Sue Matthias (acting editor): Sue, I realise you have probably had a hellish time covering such a lengthy gap while the new editor gets his feet under the table. But...please, for god's sake, this is just another third rate article from a failed player in the Labour leadership.

I'm dyslexic and I can knock out better stuff than this. Literally.

BegbiesEvilTwin
06 September 2008 at 00:10

guido: How's your financial situation these days?

BegbiesEvilTwin
06 September 2008 at 00:20

Martin/Sue: Error. This was meant to be put on the Charles Clarke article. Apologies.

raggedyman
06 September 2008 at 00:24

Ecce homo:

Look beyond the political philosophy and you find a view of human nature - for the 'conservative' that view is a deeply pessimistic one. But what is this 'essence' of Man? Does man have a nature or does ideology prescribe one?

Morg: what do you know of Ho or the VC? They are the demonised enemy - the other. Have you read their histories or their biographies? Do you know them as well as you think you know LBJ? May be they agonised too; may be they had more right to do so since they were defending their homeland. What would an Iowan or a Texan do in the same circumstances?

The VC? Is that not the point? Is this linguistic shorthand not itself an act of dehumanisation? Like gooks? The first step is to dehumanise; the next step is to exterminate. That's what the Nazis taught us, right?

raggedyman
06 September 2008 at 00:43

Also Morg:

History is not about the good guys verses the bad guys with your lot cast as the good guys. It's a little more complicated than that. In fact there may be no good or bad guys; just degrees of bad.

You have to face the unpalatable truth that a gang of criminals have hijacked the US political system and the burning issue today is how to resuscitate the American citizenry sufficiently to restrict the actions of the aforementioned deviants whose main concern is corporate profit margins. I'm kinda hoping your with me on this one at least.

Morgan097
06 September 2008 at 02:01

Calm down, raggy,

R: But what is this 'essence' of Man? Does man have a nature or does ideology prescribe one?

M: And this, raggy, is precisely why old Billy James's pragmatism was so quintessentially American.

A century ago, my dear granny wouldn't have recognized our world of plenty, with its universal suffrage, jet transport, modern medicine and Google. We achieved this not through the pronouncements of Adam Smith, Marx or de Gobineau, but through trial and error. Our civilization may not be perfect, but ask yourself which alternative era our antecedents would have preferred to inhabit.

R: Morg: what do you know of Ho or the VC?

M: More than I ever intended to.

R: They are the demonised enemy - the other... May be they agonised too; may be they had more right to do so since they were defending their homeland.

M: Actually, raggy, they were largely ideologically-brainwashed, functionally illiterate peasants fighting for a warped Leninist totalitarian vision, who routinely massacred elected politicians, teachers, scientists, doctors, and anyone else who stood between them their masters' dystopia.

R: The VC? Is that not the point? Is this linguistic shorthand not itself an act of dehumanisation? Like gooks?

M: If you knew charlie like Morgie knew charlie, you'd have wet kissed your Browning buzzsaw whenever it cut him in half.

R: You have to face the unpalatable truth that a gang of criminals have hijacked the US political system and the burning issue today is how to resuscitate the American citizenry sufficiently to restrict the actions of the aforementioned deviants whose main concern is corporate profit margins. I'm kinda hoping your with me on this one at least.

M: Put down your Chomsky Reader, take a deep breath, and listen to the great Kate Smith sing our unofficial national anthem, "God Bless America."

Anytime we're dissatisfied with our leaders, we simply vote 'em out of office. If you don't believe me, just check back in January.

Morgan097
06 September 2008 at 03:55

But to re-experience the black Morgie Zeitgeist circa July '66, just play Springfield's "For What It's Worth," Ochs's "Draft Dodger Rag," and his central mantra, Country Joe McDonald's "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag."

Morgan097
06 September 2008 at 05:51

Just a sample:

Well, come on mothers throughout the land,

Pack your boys off to Vietnam.

Come on fathers, don't hesitate,

Send 'em off before it's too late.

Be the first one on your block

To have your boy come home in a box.

And it's one, two, three

What are we fighting for ?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,

Next stop is Vietnam.

And it's five, six, seven,

Open up the pearly gates,

Well there ain't no time to wonder why,

Whoopee! we're all gonna die.

knave
06 September 2008 at 09:31

Morgan

The innocence again. Raggy is right. The world is not made up of good guys and bad guys. Just degrees of self interest and lies.

Once again brilinat posts Write on. Spot on.

knave
06 September 2008 at 09:32

sorry brilliant

raggedyman
06 September 2008 at 09:42

Morg:

''simply vote 'em out of office''

Amusing. Check back to the 1980s & 1990s; you'll notice a lot of familiar names behind the state apparatus - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, etc. This democracy stuff is theater for the people - the same class of elites have been running the US state for over a hundred years. They just rotate the 'front man' every few years.

It's a safety valve that seems to work since much the same class of elites have been running the show for much of the duration.

The 'credit crunch' is just one aspect of this massively fraudulent system in which wealth is redistributed from the many to the few. But such systems whose dynamism is built upon an inegalitarian foundation needs growth to remain stable. It is the promise of upward mobility that keeps such a system stable - but as the truly astonishing statistic of the number of US citizens incarcerated reveals [2.5 million] increasing numbers see no hope of such advancement through legitimate channels. And crudely there seems to be a strong correlation between prison population and extremes of inequality but in particular where the legitimate upward progression by economic groups has become unrealisable or nonviable. Given the likely social unrest that this bleak prospect of poverty extremes and lack of social mobility offers the 'war on terror' has become a great convenience - the necessary means or mechanism by which a centrist/elitist Government can extend its powers of social control ushering in a newly reinvigorated era of authoritarianism and repressive governance.

Interestingly the problem for the 21st century is the formerly much traduced one raised by Malthus - the problem of unending growth in a world of finite resources. The dynamic but inegalitarian systems of the first world now universally adopted will confront this inherent contradiction with ever greater urgency this century[I predict].

But more importantly the promise of the Enlightenment project to deliver 'progress' and a better life to the world's population as a bedrock of its expansionist credo will in the process become thoroughly discredited. It is perhaps even time to re-think what we mean by progress; indeed as I have suggested elsewhere to reconsider what it is we mean by the 'good life'; and whether, in fact, we ever had anything closely resembling it.

raggedyman
06 September 2008 at 10:02

Also Morg:

''M: Actually, raggy, they were largely ideologically-brainwashed, functionally illiterate peasants fighting for a warped Leninist totalitarian vision, who routinely massacred elected politicians, teachers, scientists, doctors, and anyone else who stood between them their masters' dystopia.''

Have you seen Jarheads or Full Metal Jacket?

War blurs everything blending all into a universal barbarism.

It's interesting that the pro-War group are often made up overwhelmingly of those that have never fought a war; and that the strongest antiwar campaigners have been war vets.

Here is Paul Fussell:

As a former soldier, what struck me is the absolutely heartless way that war was being pursued by the Americans, partly I think because of the race problem. The Vietnamese to us were not merely communists, they were nasty little yellow people without souls. It didn't matter how we blew them up or how we bombed them or how we burned their villages and so on. I was very struck by that. And one thing I was trying to do in The Great War and Modern Memory was to awaken a sort of civilian sympathy for the people who suffer on the ground in wartime, and that's really an act that I've been performing, oh, ever since 1945, I suppose.

What I admired about Fussell was his admission that he not only killed during the war [WWII] but that he actually enjoyed the act of killing. A lot of soldiers feel that but can't come to terms with it. Fussell was being fearlessly honest here.

By the way his 'The Great War & Modern Memory' is one of the few books of the twentieth century that should be required reading.

Morgan097
06 September 2008 at 14:46

Thanks for the kind words, knave.

You may even be right about my stubborn innocence.

Whenever I watch the squad sing the Mickey Mouse Club hymn in the final scene of FMJ, I usually cry.

And sing along.

Morgan097
06 September 2008 at 16:45

raggy, me boy,

If you're to reach the promised land of Wisdom and Truth (somewhere, I believe, northwest of Albuquerque), you must first least lose your anachronistic, doctrinaire, Marxist tunnel vision.

M: ''simply vote 'em out of office''

R: Amusing...This democracy stuff is theater for the people

M: "This democracy stuff"? Which alternative do you prefer, Plato's republic, More's Utopia, Stalin's gulag, Mao's Cultural Revolution, Hitler's Arbeit macht frei, or Strangelove's bunker?

R: the same class of elites have been running the US state for over a hundred years. They just rotate the 'front man' every few years.

M: How soon we forget Dizzy and Gladstone.

R: The 'credit crunch' is just one aspect of this massively fraudulent system in which wealth is redistributed from the many to the few. But such systems whose dynamism is built upon an inegalitarian foundation needs growth to remain stable. It is the promise of upward mobility that keeps such a system stable...

M: Hey, don't ya miss The Great Leap Forward? (Just ignore the corpses.)

R: ...but as the truly astonishing statistic of the number of US citizens incarcerated reveals [2.5 million] increasing numbers see no hope of such advancement through legitimate channels.

M: What patronizing BS, raggy! Such soft racism of diminished expectations insults the overwhelming majority of law-abiding working class Americans (and particularly, those of color) who have ever achieved a better life through honest, determined, hard work.

R: Given the likely social unrest that this bleak prospect of poverty extremes offers...

M: Ya see a lot of oppressed, disease-ridden, starving Americans on the Beeb, do ya, raggy?

R: ...and lack of social mobility

M: Tell that to billionaires Bob Johnson, Russ Simmons and Oprah.

R: the 'war on terror' has become a great convenience - the necessary means or mechanism by which a centrist/elitist Government can extend its powers of social control ushering in a newly reinvigorated era of authoritarianism and repressive governance.

M: Actually, raggy, the absolutely justified War on Islamic Terror, has thus far spared America from a single terrorist catastrophe since 9/11.

R: Interestingly the problem for the 21st century is the formerly much traduced one raised by Malthus - the problem of unending growth in a world of finite resources. The dynamic but inegalitarian systems of the first world now universally adopted will confront this inherent contradiction with ever greater urgency this century[I predict].

M: Don't bet the ranch on that prediction, raggy. The infinite adaptability of the American Experiment has thus far met every challenge.

R: But more importantly the promise of the Enlightenment project to deliver 'progress' and a better life to the world's population as a bedrock of its expansionist credo will in the process become thoroughly discredited. It is perhaps even time to re-think what we mean by progress; indeed as I have suggested elsewhere to reconsider what it is we mean by the 'good life'; and whether, in fact, we ever had anything closely resembling it.

M: In the words of yet another great American, Katie Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton Kennedy Butler, "I'll think about it tomorrow."

R: Have you seen Jarheads or Full Metal Jacket?

M: No to #1, yes to #2.

R: War blurs everything blending all into a universal barbarism.

M: Tell me about it, raggy.

R: It's interesting that the pro-War group are often made up overwhelmingly of those that have never fought a war...

M: In the words of the great Clemenceau, "war is too important to be left to the generals."

R: What I admired about Fussell was his admission that he not only killed during the war [WWII] but that he actually enjoyed the act of killing. A lot of soldiers feel that but can't come to terms with it. Fussell was being fearlessly honest here.

M: I too admire Fussell, raggy, but before you go overboard, remember that he famously wrote that in his heart he knew that the Truman decision to drop the bomb saved his life.

R: By the way his 'The Great War & Modern Memory' is one of the few books of the twentieth century that should be required reading.

M: I completely agree.

raggedyman
06 September 2008 at 21:48

Morg:

I don't know if it's my working class upbringing but I have come to expect most things to come with quips.

Some responses: mostly quips.

Fussell also said re: Iraq:

"If you don't get angry about this war you don't deserve to be alive."

Morgan097
06 September 2008 at 23:08

I apologize for the flippancies, raggy, but some of your lugubrious Weltschmerz is such unworthy, sophomoric, Marxist claptrap that serious reply would bore me to tears.

And I too, "get angry about this war."

Because Bush 41 could so easily have told our "allies" in Gulf War I (the Syrians being particularly invisible examples) to go f**k themselves, while we drove unopposed into Baghdad, long before Saddam would be given the priceless time to prepare his later bloody insurgency.

Morgan097
07 September 2008 at 00:31

And you, raggy, are not the helpless victim of some imaginary, stagnant, class determinism.

The world is a place of infinite possibilities.

Morgan097
07 September 2008 at 01:18

But if you still feel constricted by Blighty, your eccentric command of the literary and philosophical repertoires (plus the invaluable asset of possessing a UK accent of ANY kind) would probably soon make you comfortably at home in either New York, Boston, Vegas, Miami, San Francisco or even LA.

Morgan097
07 September 2008 at 04:08

knave will no doubt dismiss it as just more innocence on Morgie's part, but I still believe that Conway did eventually again find his Shangri-la.

raggedyman
07 September 2008 at 12:05

Morg:

I suspect you wouldn't know Marxist claptrap if it came up and pulled yer nose and slapped yer rosy cheeks once or twice yer little devil.

It strikes me that it is never very long before neocons reveal their true colours - that they are extraordinarily naive military fantasists who believe that for every complex problem in the world there is a simple and easy military solution.

One such fantasy is the one you mention - the why didn't we say f**k you to the world and simply march to Baghdad back in 1991 and give the arch villain Saddam Hussein the order of the boot.

Again the typical necon attitude borne up by this military fantasy is to treat world organisations, international relations, and allied partners as if they simply don't matter. But in 1991..

The House of Saud only very reluctantly allowed US forces onto Saudi sand[and which inspired bin Laden who has always been primarily a threat to the House of Saud and, hence US interests] and only after being convinced that the Iraqis intended an invasion into Saudi territory [which in fact was pure US-provided smoke]. Did the US need Saudi support and would they have got it for a physical invasion of Iraq and the removal of its regime?

Did the US have the option of a northern front through Kurdistan at the time? Would Turkey have collaborated in creating one? What if this action proved so unpopular with Arab opinion that it seriously destabilised the allied Arab regimes of the region?

What of the 'power vacuum' that removing Saddam at the time would have left - descent into chaotic civil war? The insurgency, contrary to what you say, has largely been spontaneous and is likely to have been much the same in 1991. Replacement with Iran-leaning Shia-dominated Government? Was there a UN Mandate? Could one have been obtained? If not how would US allies react particularly if Iraq subsequently became a mess? There would be no coalition to point to; could the US really risk this kind of political fallout with possible global isolation? What of the dangers of such blatant unilateralism to international law and the world order?

It would seem that Bush senior and his strategists thought the wisest course to be the most cautious. At any rate the military option would hardly be the easy 'f**k our allies' solution that you suggest.

Perhaps neocons should stick to paint-balling and target practice, that is, if the best interests of US foreign policy are to be served.

taghioff.info
08 September 2008 at 05:35

Why do we assume that the US has a foreign policy, rather than a corrupt set of immediate domestic interests played out via the rest of the world?

taghioff.info
08 September 2008 at 05:40

One person who must now be painfully aware of this is Tony Blair, who must now also rue not forcing Brown to stay put as Chancellor.

Oddly enough, even with a recession coming, I think Brown would have been more popular in his former job than he is now...

Hey ho.