New Word Order

[gottaB]

Tom Engelhardt's style tends towards the discursive--the point? Media criticism, deconstructing the lies about the war in Iraq.

A Sample:

In Imperial China, a new dynastic emperor ascending the throne performed a ceremony involving what was called "the rectification of names." This was on the theory that the previous dynasty had fallen, in part, because the gap between reality and the way it was named had grown to abyss-like proportions. Of course, this yawning gap between the world out there and the words used to describe it has been an essential aspect of Bush-induced American reality since September 11, 2001. It has been at the heart of the American bubble (like the moving "bubble" within which our President travels the world, emptying the centers of whole cities as he passes by in the process of creating some kind of Potemkin planet).

We can see the results of this in an unnerving survey just conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland (www.pipa.org) and discussed this week by Jim Lobe of Inter Press News (Bushʼs believe it or not). Not only, he reports, does "a majority of the public still believe Iraq was closely tied to the al-Qaeda terrorist group and had WMD stocks or programs before US troops invaded the country 13 months ago," but a significant majority believe that Saddam's Iraq was in some way involved in the 9/11 attacks and believe that "experts" back them on all these points. They believe as well that global opinion favored our going to war with Iraq or at least was "evenly balanced" on the subject -- and most of these figures vary at best only slightly from prewar polling figures (even as dissatisfaction over presidential "handling" of post-war Iraq policy has risen dramatically). Holding such misperceptions is, in turn, closely correlated with the urge to reelect George Bush in November.

***

The question that lies under all this language, somewhere beneath the gap between our description of reality and what's going on out there, beneath the new word and world order, somewhere deep in that dark abyss, is whether, as Paul Rogers of openDemocracy puts the matter, the U.S. situation in Iraq is "actually becoming unsustainable." Put another way, whatever the immediate profits and advantages, even to the Bush administration, is such a world unsustainable?

Forgot to add link: New Word Order

[oblivious]

1. Of course it's unsustainable

Russia, China, Iran, all sitting back watching the US exhaust itself, militarily and financially. They don't have to do a thing to challenge the greatest economic and military superpower the world has ever seen. Just sit back and wait. They know its unsustainable. Look at the numbers.

[RC]

2. Didn't this happen to another large county

not all that long ago?