A Machiavellian Congress?
from Chuck Dupree @ Bad Attitudes
a brief excerpt:
We’re good, so we can’t be acting from bad motives. We wouldn’t be planning, building, and occupying permanent bases in Iraq, because that would mean we invaded to steal the oil. Certainly we plan to turn those immense bases over to the Iraqis, just as soon as we can get them ready to accept the transfer. Right now, though, wouldn’t be prudent. Plus, they don’t have any aircraft that require 14,000-foot runways.
This kind of thinking is a natural defense system in many cases. A decent person cannot but feel sympathy when disaster befalls others. When that disaster results from a human source, we’re angry with whoever caused the distress. If that turns out to be us, we’ve got a problem. So we look away if we can. If not, we invent a reason to decide that it’s all for the best in this best of all possible worlds. We rationalize, somehow. Even if it leaves us believing something as patently silly as O’Reilly’s stuff, it allows our brains to get past that uncomfortable feeling of being undecided.
It’s not really that we’re pro-empire. We just consistently make pro-imperial decisions at critical junctures.
It’s an honest mistake in a certain sense: that most of the people who contribute to those decisions really believe in American exceptionalism. Even looking back, they can only figure that mistakes are continually being made in the implementation of foreign policy decisions.
It couldn’t really be the pattern it appears to be, that foreign policy decisions are consistently imperial.
Better stop looking now.
FULL POST: A Machiavellian Congress?
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