<nettime> Rudy Giuliani makes the Republican case for George Bush

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

the scariest thing i'd heard before listening to the republican convention
tonight on tv was thucydides's description of the plague's progress within
athens around 430 b.c while the spartans waited outside the city walls to
finish them off, should there be anyone left once the plague got through
with the athenians.

and it was only rudy giuliani, the former mayor of new york, whom i heard!
we haven't hear from the terminator yet! giuliani described the necessity to
not fight terrorism defensively but to remain on the offense and combat it
abroad so that the usa does not have to face it in their cities. if the
enemies of the usa obtain weapons of mass destruction and use them on the
usa, this will be a much bigger war than it is now. so it is necessary to
destroy all terrorist organizations that regard the usa as an enemy. he
repeated what bush said earlier: "either you are with us or you are with the
terrorists."

it is a recipe for perpetual warfare. efforts to destroy enemies abroad
result not in the eradication of enemy organizations but in birthing yet
more enemies because for every enemy they kill, they kill several hundred
innocent civilians and provide yet more reason for the young to enlist with
the enemy.

consequently, the usa is forced into hammering home a message not simply to
terrorist organizations but to the population at large of invaded countries:
do *not* fuck with us. they have to settle for being feared, not respected.

concerning weapons of mass destruction, it seems like the way to prevent
people from getting them is to keep tabs on the resources involved in
creating them and to dismantle within the usa and elsewhere the manufacture
of more of them. it turns out that the weapons inspections in iraq *were*
working; iraq had in fact dismantled its WMD programs.

giuliani also spoke against the "appeasement of terrorists" practiced
"especially in europe". the republicans regard much of europe as appeasers
of terrorism; hence their determination to go it alone.

but it seems very likely that they cannot go it alone successfully. there
needs to be broad international cooperation both for the sake of the usa and
the rest of the world. the usa has plunged itself into huge deficits with
the bush policy of pre-emptive military action. they cannot keep this up in
perpetual warfare while simultaneously creating ten new enemies for every
one they assassinate and pre-empting international support by acting
unilaterally.

the bush administration is plainly not good at--seems barely interested
in--forging international cooperation. nor does it seem likely that they
would see the wisdom in dismantling WMD programs at home and forging
international cooperation toward the goal of having fewer WMD resources to
chase around the world in perpetual warfare. is it simply that the genie is
out of the bottle and this is what the world is doomed to do forever more?
or is there a way to dismantle WMD programs so that fear of them in the
hands of enemies does not drive perpetual warfare, whether they are present
or not?

watching the republican convention tonight, they regard themselves at war
with global terrorism in the abstract. they regard themselves as engaged in
a war that will continue until all such organizations are stamped out or
rendered threatless. they regard it as a necessity for the USA to press on
with this, regardless of international opinion, until the last terrorist is
dealt with.

Which will never happen.

They themselves must be dealt with. But they are pressing their case very
hard to the public and it is entirely conceivable that the republicans could
be re-elected out of fear, and also fear that the democrats are indecisive.
It may simply be a matter of bad cop/good cop when it comes to the choice
between the current republicans and current democrats--the military
industrial complex is at least as powerful as any USA politican--but the
world would definitely welcome the good cop at this point, who has professed
an interest in starting to rebuild international relations that have
suffered so badly under the republicans.

ja

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