[NYTr] War on Terror a Bad Investment - Juan Cole on Tom Friedman

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Informed Comment - Sep 30, 2007
http://www.juancole.com/2007/09/end-of-bonapartism-and-war-on-terror.html

The End of Bonapartism and the War on Terror

by Juan Cole

NYT columnist Tom Friedman's column, "9/11 is over," sounds the death
knell for the Neoconservative use of 9/11 and is in particular an
attack on Rudy Giuliani.

Friedman's main arguments are that the Bush administration's approach
to dealing with al-Qaeda has so damaged the US image abroad, has so
inconvenienced foreign travelers and visiting business investors, and
has so diverted spending from essential US infrastructure such as
bridges and airports, that it risks making the US economically backward
in a globalizing world.

The column is significant because it argues that Bushism- Cheneyism is
bad for business. The United States is the world's foremost business
society, and virtually everything in the society (low taxes on the
wealthy, no health care for the middle classes and poor, no protections
for labor organizers, favoring of certain kinds of international trade
over lower middle class job security, etc.) is arranged for the
convenience of the business classes. If Friedman's conviction becomes
widespread in that community, the pressures to abandon the 'War on
Terror' will be irresistible.

Bushism-Cheneyism has aspects of Bonapartism, whereby the state rules
in an authoritarian way and disregards the people, representing itself
as the true representative of the business classes. In fact, it serves
only a small spectrum of corporate cronies of the ruling elite,
disadvantaging almost everyone else. It expands government, but not
into provision of useful infrastructure (bridges, airports), but toward
the provision of "security" (often just a label for make-work
unnecessary jobs, such as extra al-Qaeda-fighting police in Wyoming) or
of artificial "investment opportunities" such as an Iraq under US
military occupation..

Friedman is the voice of the non-Libertarian business interests, the
ones that recognize that certain necessary public goods will not be
provided by corporations and so must be provided by government. He also
represents those who are unafraid of global competition (thus his
slamming of Lou Dobbs), and indeed are convinced that the big
money-making opportunities on the horizon lie in globalization and in
removal of barriers to international trade, investment and finance.
(They are undeterred for some reason by the 1997 melt-down in Asia,
which occurred precisely because governments unwisely opened the door
to unregulated international speculation).

For the 'globalized business' crowd, the Iraq war was not a sacred
mission, as it was for the Neoconservatives, but rather just another
lowering of barriers to investment and business (which might also have
opened the Arab world up, which would have been all to the good). The
Iraq War worked in part precisely because both the Bonapartist and the
global-capital fractions within the business classes could agree that
it might end Arab socialism and end the barriers to doing business
among the 300 million people of the Middle East.

Friedman writes:

    ' I’d love to see us salvage something decent in Iraq that might
help tilt the Middle East onto a more progressive pathway. That was and
is necessary to improve our security. But sometimes the necessary is
impossible — and we just can’t keep chasing that rainbow this way. ' 

Friedman's column:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/30friedman.html

In other words, the Iraq War was a business investment, which was a bit
of a risk but entirely justifiable at the time (you can hear the
nervous CEO explaining to the Board of Directors). But the investment
has gone south, isn't working out, and no successful businessman throws
good money after bad.

The attack on Giuliani comes because he is still attached to the new
acquisition and does want to go on hemorrhaging funds.

It is time, Friedman argues in contrast, to cut our losses and sell off
this white elephant of an acquisition (the whole 'War on Terror'
including Iraq), which is bleeding money, hurting the firm's image,
scaring off investors, and forestalling needed new investments in key
growth sectors.

USA, Inc. is moving on.