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McNamara 2: Electric Boogaloo
Mar. 18th, 2005 02:07 pmListen, this is probably the one time you will hear me say that Karl Marx was right. History does manifest as occurence and recurrence, as a tragedy the first time, as an Onion article the second time around.
Here´s the sitch: the secretary of defense of the most powerful Empire in the world orchestrats a disaster of a war, a quagmire during which hundreds of thousands die for the noble cause of imperialist ideology. Wacky details of this war include lies to congress, lies to the world community and a number of exciting war crimes like genocide of civilians. Subsequently the architect is rewarded with an appointment to the post of the president of the World Bank.
So, that was in 1968.
I would write about Bush´s shortlisting of Wolfowitz for World Bank, but then I would be in a position of Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote, retyping the above paragraph word-by-word (except with the addition of "Deputy" before "Secretary of Defense.")
On one hand, one could read this as yet another Cartmanism, a moment of sociopathic honesty from our administration, where World Bank = Arm of Empire, which is a pretty fair assessment. On the other hand, just in terms of the internal logic (reading Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande ethnographies taught me to ALWAYS look for internal logic) the World Bank was presumably created to aid the world community in infrastructure and rebuilding projects. Apparently the US government, as an insitution, is historically committed to the intriguing and radical idea that the person responsible for the destruction is the logical person to fix it. While that idea works within the parameters of "clean your room!" I am not sure that is an equally valid approach for international affairs.
The ONLY "logical" explanation I can produce is some warped SAT-problem guideline where some new secret edict (cooked up by an administration that is fond of rudimentary semiotics-in-action and at the same time, like Beavis, lacks the understanding of the symbolic function of language), dictates that from now on a requirement for heading World Bank is a name that contains "wolf," as Wolfowitz is primed to replace Wolfensohn. ( Hot-t-t! In next month's DoD briefing: Wolfowitz changes name to Wereworlfowitz!)
Once again my choo-choo of thought crashes into the metarealization that my chirping carbon-dates me as an member of that dinosaur wiped out by the Neocon Comet, the atavistic "reality-based community."
I´d write more but I just got back from filming for five hours and now have to go sort out the fiscal Tower of Babel in my wallet, which is stuffed with money from four different countries and I can´t tell any of the bills apart except for the Peruvian 10 Sol denomination, which I have learned to recognize because it features national war hero José Abelardo Quiñones Gonzales, who, in this particular representation looks remarkably like an xtra-perky Amelia Earhart.
Here´s the sitch: the secretary of defense of the most powerful Empire in the world orchestrats a disaster of a war, a quagmire during which hundreds of thousands die for the noble cause of imperialist ideology. Wacky details of this war include lies to congress, lies to the world community and a number of exciting war crimes like genocide of civilians. Subsequently the architect is rewarded with an appointment to the post of the president of the World Bank.
So, that was in 1968.
I would write about Bush´s shortlisting of Wolfowitz for World Bank, but then I would be in a position of Pierre Menard, author of Don Quixote, retyping the above paragraph word-by-word (except with the addition of "Deputy" before "Secretary of Defense.")
On one hand, one could read this as yet another Cartmanism, a moment of sociopathic honesty from our administration, where World Bank = Arm of Empire, which is a pretty fair assessment. On the other hand, just in terms of the internal logic (reading Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande ethnographies taught me to ALWAYS look for internal logic) the World Bank was presumably created to aid the world community in infrastructure and rebuilding projects. Apparently the US government, as an insitution, is historically committed to the intriguing and radical idea that the person responsible for the destruction is the logical person to fix it. While that idea works within the parameters of "clean your room!" I am not sure that is an equally valid approach for international affairs.
The ONLY "logical" explanation I can produce is some warped SAT-problem guideline where some new secret edict (cooked up by an administration that is fond of rudimentary semiotics-in-action and at the same time, like Beavis, lacks the understanding of the symbolic function of language), dictates that from now on a requirement for heading World Bank is a name that contains "wolf," as Wolfowitz is primed to replace Wolfensohn. ( Hot-t-t! In next month's DoD briefing: Wolfowitz changes name to Wereworlfowitz!)
Once again my choo-choo of thought crashes into the metarealization that my chirping carbon-dates me as an member of that dinosaur wiped out by the Neocon Comet, the atavistic "reality-based community."
I´d write more but I just got back from filming for five hours and now have to go sort out the fiscal Tower of Babel in my wallet, which is stuffed with money from four different countries and I can´t tell any of the bills apart except for the Peruvian 10 Sol denomination, which I have learned to recognize because it features national war hero José Abelardo Quiñones Gonzales, who, in this particular representation looks remarkably like an xtra-perky Amelia Earhart.
