McNamara 2: Electric Boogaloo

[lapsedmodernist]

Listen, 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.

Comments

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

Seems to me this is just another part of the Bush administrations war on global organization. The World Bank was already mistrusted (or even hated) in many parts of the developing world, and putting Wolfowitz in charge will only deepen the suspicion that the WB is another front for colonialism.

Is there any global organization that the Bush admininistration hasn't tried to sabotage or simply withdrawn from?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Well, I see your point, but your argument seems to imply that World Bank is somehow at odds with the global Colonial project, which I can't agree with. It might be an internal squabble, but of the Halliburton-kicked-Carlyle-group-in-the-teeth sort.

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

I've always seen the WB as a misguided but wellmeaning body, loosely affiliated with the UN. I might be wrong, though. You think there is actually a stated (clandestine) goal of the WB to keep the developing world down?

[twistedcat.livejournal.com]

i don't thinmk it's that clandestine, really. i mean, they might not be putting it on their letter head, but...

wasn't it WB that caused the etheopian famine by giving them too many cows, or am i remembering that wrong?

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

It sounds like something they would have done... But that's the thing though - did they deliberately cause the famine, or were they well meaning incompetents? I'm guessing the latter.

[twistedcat.livejournal.com]

it's so hard to tell, the difference between ignorance, incompetence, and maliciousness.... history remembers results, after all...

they over populated the land with cows, and lost all their aerable crop space. ta da! famine! stupidest engineered disaster i can think of, on purpose or not.

but mostly i am replying because i am in love with your user name...

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

True, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that...

You know, I really can't think of a worse engineered disaster either... There are some good runners up, like the introduction of the diurnal mongoose to kill the nocturnal rat on infested islands, but nothing quite on that scale.

Ahh, what can I say... Thank you! The gnu likes to be loved :)

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

It is quite possibly the best user name ever.
In terms of misguided but wellmeaning organizations, people often think that way about the IMF, which would sort of work except that they basically answer to the World Bank.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

erm, you know what, I might have lied, it might be WB that answers to the IMF and not the other way around. Either way, it´s all part of the same system.

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

Well, I quite agree on the username issue ;)

IIUIC, the WB actually does stuff (like send cows), while the IMF demands reforms to lend cheap money. As you are saying though, same system. Question still remains whether they are evil or misguided...

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know as much about all the inner workings of World Bank and IMF as people who study economics, but books like "The Global Gamble" by Peter Gowan (which is a very in-depth technical analysis of the US management of the "dollar regime" worldwide) and "Globalization and its Discontents" (authored by Stiglitz, formerly of WB) mkae a pretty compelling case that WB, WTO and IMF have had an inflexible neoliberal agenda since the 1980s, which is basically to promote the (American) interests of free trade worldwide, regardless of how badly NAFTA and CAFTA and similar agreements screw the "satellite" countries. Furthermore there is the little matter of the IMF essentially causing the Asian market collapse in the 1990s because the "Asian sector" wanted to establish its own independent market and other such shenanigans in countries that don't toe the line w/r/t the neoliberal agenday. Unfortunately, any "reform" in those organizitions that seems to be happening at the moment is in the direction of replacing the neoliberal agenda with the neoconservative one.

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

I should check that out. My perception is just from news, so it's not exactly indepth...

Even so, it's hard to tell a agenda based on misguided zeal (laissez-faire capitalism is da bomb! Just adopt it and all your problems will go away!!!111) from an agenda with sinister undertones (free markets will impoverish you while enriching the US. MUHAHAHAHAHAHA!)

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

see also, john perkin's recent book "confessions of an economic hit man":

Interview: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

AMY GOODMAN: How closely did you work with the World Bank?

JOHN PERKINS: Very, very closely with the World Bank. The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F.

[yourfaults.livejournal.com]

I think as usual, Bush says one thing and then does the opposite. So it was all this talk of "mending bridges" with "Europe" and now appoints Wolfie as a big screw-you. Exactly like appointing John Bolton to the UN or John Negroponte to anything.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oooh, is this the Graham I know? The brilliance of Spice Girls and my fellow anglophile Graham? I apologize if this is totally the wrong Graham.

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much my feeling too

[stanleylieber.livejournal.com]

Will be interesting (read: predictable) to see how the World Bank's attitude toward Palestine develops under Wolfowitz.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Well, let's see how the conference of donors goes, but yeah.

[never-the-less.livejournal.com]

isn't there a third, farsical phase in which the event is repeated only this time in the form of the Onion headline?

someone on my FL posted the other day about Bono being nominated/suggested as head of the World Bank. For real. He'd probably be better than Wolfy, but still...

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Well, according to Marx it is the second iteration that is the farce. So, we should amend it (Marx was expounding on Hegel there, anyway).

1. Tragedy
2. Farce
2. Onion "In The News" Headline (which is doubly meta, because not only is it "text" rather than event" but also because the brilliance of Onion headlines lies in the fact that they are not followed by actual stories.)

QED:


Bush Followed Everywhere By Line Of Baby Ducks

[paracelsus.livejournal.com]

This is my favourite post on this whole damn website.





I can tell that we'll fight over Marx one day, though.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I can tell that we'll fight over Marx one day, though.

O? I look forward to it then.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

What an enjoyable post to read...

Also a pleasure to find another person who'se read Evans-Pritchard's study on the Azande... Have you read Levi-Strauss' The Raw and The Cooked? There's probably something in that about the structural equivalence in 1968/2005 that we can find as well..

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

Well, let's see, I am a fifth-year graduate student in Anthropology, I have pretty much read all over EP and LS that there is to read. Please elaborate on the structural equivalence idea?

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

You've seen The Fog Of War?

I'm actually pleased, if bewildered, by Wolfowitz's nomination, on the grounds that he'll be much less dangerous at the World Bank than at the Pentagon. (And I never had much time for the World Bank anyways.)

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I have seen The Fog of War (and also am looking forward to Why We Fight by Jarecki, which my friend who saw it at Sundance this year told me I would love)

I'm actually pleased, if bewildered, by Wolfowitz's nomination, on the grounds that he'll be much less dangerous at the World Bank than at the Pentagon.

I suppose that is the cup half full approach. My first thought was "who are we going to get instead of Wolfowitz now?" and my second thought was "whoever it is, they will probably be even worse." It will be like when I huffed and puffed over Kerik and then "I Heart Torture" Gonzalez got appointed instead.

[nearly-there.livejournal.com]

It will be like when I huffed and puffed over Kerik and then "I Heart Torture" Gonzalez got appointed instead.

O, yes. For awhile, I was trying to be optimistic about things like that... now, any openings strike shivering fear into my heart.

(Also, friending you back because you are awesome and I just noticed you'd tagged me. ^_^)

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

O, yes. For awhile, I was trying to be optimistic about things like that... now, any openings strike shivering fear into my heart.

Indeed! This is like an old Russian joke that has somehow migrated into the "not funny anymore, just true" category that posits that the difference between a pessimist and an optimist is that a pessimist thinks that things can't get any worse and an optimist thinks they CAN.

(Also, friending you back because you are awesome and I just noticed you'd tagged me. ^_^)
Thank you and awesome! :)

[mjmj.livejournal.com]

tom toles on the WB appointment:

http://us.news1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/uc/20050321/stt050320.gif