Self-Defeating Logic

SELF-DEFEATING LOGIC/ WIT’S END:

THE STORY OF AMERICAN HISTORY TODAY 2.26.2006



SELF-DEFEATED LOGIC: U.S. policy in Iraq ….

The U.S.* is now demanding a unity* (non-sectarian democratic) government to be set up and functional in Iraq before it can pull out (or pull down) its military presence there. Ambassador Zalmay Khalid has stated American money will not be used to support sectarian* (read: Muslim) politics (read: al Sadr’s militia). His remarks were denounced by Iraq’s Prime Minister as helping inflame destruction of the holy Shiite Mosque in Samarra.

But Tom Friedman on ABC’s Sunday talk show stated the obvious when he said sectarianism* is what politics there is all about. What is being demanded is therefore impossible, a mere word construct.

Moreover, it U.S. actions that have rendered it so. First, all Baathist (Saddam Hussein’s) party members were to be excluded from the new government by decree of Paul Bremer. Then, to get national services, not to say security forces operating, that had to be rescinded, leading to Suuni’s running the infrastructure. That was gong to be smoothed over by “democracy”, with the likes of Alawi and Chalabi cutting the deals behind the scenes. But with a large turn-out, the Shia predictably got the votes and were not inclined to make concessions. Many of the police agencies, especially in the south close to Iran, were of this sect. Thus, U.S. support for the government in effect arms both sides of impending violent sectarian conflicts. This is a null-case option.

The only alternative is take over by a unity* government – but if the democratic* vote didn’t produce it, what’s left?

Now comes the kicker. The only point on which Suunii and Shia vehemently agree is getting the U.S. the hell out of their coundtry.

And this rounds out the self-defeating position “from the other side”, so to speak.
What is demanded as the condition for pulling out – a non-sectarian government – had been defeated already by previous actions. And if, per impossible, it could be met, that would be a defeat as well.


THE LOGIC OF THE SELF-DEFEATING (originating in the psychodynamics of child abuse, explained in detail elsewhere)

The double null case scenario that has played out in Iraq is a predictable outcome of the mentality that elected* George W. Bush; laid over onto Americans who submitted to his bait-switch rhetoric (from “compassionate” to “faith based” conservative), … watched the WTC towers implode on TV; …. protested (many did) but could not stop, the relentless, lying buildup toward the Iraq war; … cringed under the cruelty of “Shock and Awe” and the destruction of Baghdad; … cried out in deepest shame at the Abu Ghraib pictures; …endured crypto-sectarian violence unleashed against homosexuals and pro-choice “liberals” in the ’04 election; …: the sub-group mentality responsible for actively bringing these about is historically tabbed, now. “neoconservatives” or “neocons”); also – using -- the Republican Party. It developed a cult-like ideology, centered around defense of right-wing Israeli Likkud party positions, represented here by the link between Netanyahu and extremist Southern sectarians Falwell, Robertson, Land, (unreconstructed Southern Baptist types) et al. This political bond between religious right wing conservatism of Christian evangelicals (“Bush’s base”) and their Likkud cohorts in the Holy Land, as we once called it, could was a witches brew worthy of the Elders of Zion, themselves (fraudulent authors of the “Protocols” everyone in the Arab world reads) Its outcome, for America, is the picture of Paul Wolfowitz saying “Reaganesque. That was the only thing we could all agree on in shaping Mid-East foreign policy” at the beginning of the Bush administration.

The inner side of the crypto-sectarian neocon movement is the token “Zion”: as in, “the Law shall go forth from” when the faithful Jews return to Israel; “ZionISM” (late 19th century idea of Jews returning to Jerusalem, e.g., Theodore Hertzl), “Zionist State”, now used officially of Israel (by this President, G.W. Bush, with Ariel Sharon). As a sectarian* token, this represents (a.) an escalation via linguistic boot-strapping of Israel as a religious state; (b.) psychosemiotic injection of a sacral term as referentially descriptive into American discourse; (c.) tacit marriage of their Old Testament God* to the Protestant New Testament God* under which the U.S. constitution of this country was signed; and (d.) tacit conscription of the general citizenry it governs to Zionist Jewish causes. Which, it is relevant to note, lest we be charged with anti-Semitism, 70% of Jews in the U.S. oppose, according to a recent poll. (Compared with the major Jewish and neocon organizationa.) In psychopolitical terms, this is equivalent to having your portside shanghaied. It is a conjunction of religious opposites – the two uses of God* -- under a political umbrella, with differences seldom mentioned, much less aired. When war policy is made on pretenses of defending religious, “Judeo-Christian”, “Values of Western civilization”, but predicated on such a self-contradictory union of opposites, the result of the process can only play out membership in the double null class of options in Iraq.

In Sum: when the logic of a policy that is based on a religious identity, and that religious identity is not consistent with itself, that policy, by its logic, is self-defeating. The more the difference is masked by the rhetoric of “common terrorist enemy”, sealed with blood, the bigger the difference the differences masked make. The success of the manipulated U.S. (Great Britain)-Israel war on Iraq and the Arab world in general would mean the break-out of sectarian opposition between those who hi-jacked America’s religious heritage in the first place, which made such a war unfold