Kafka in Kabul
Tom Engelhardt on "the surpassing strangeness of the American way of war in distant lands — and in Washington" — The Afghan War Keeps Getting Weirder. Read to learn how "we carry on in the most bizarre ways in far-off lands and think nothing of it."
"Historically, it has undoubtedly been the nature of imperial powers to consider every strange thing they do more or less the norm," he concludes. "For a waning imperial power, however, such an attitude has its own dangers. If we can’t imagine the surpassing strangeness of our arrangements for making war in lands thousands of miles from the U.S., then we can’t begin to imagine how the world sees us, which means that we’re blind to our own madness."
"Historically, it has undoubtedly been the nature of imperial powers to consider every strange thing they do more or less the norm," he concludes. "For a waning imperial power, however, such an attitude has its own dangers. If we can’t imagine the surpassing strangeness of our arrangements for making war in lands thousands of miles from the U.S., then we can’t begin to imagine how the world sees us, which means that we’re blind to our own madness."
Labels: America the Beautiful, Central Asia, Decline and Fall, Republic Not Empire, War and Rumors of War
2 Comments:
The new coalition government in Britain goes on about the need to reduce government expenditure, but they do not reduce wasteful expenditure on useless wars in places like Afghanistan .
Looks like they're about as conservative as was Bush. They also took a clue from Obama by mentioning peace in the election. The wonders of the Anglo-American alliance never cease.
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