Anti-Imperialism

Speaking of shadow boxing and faded demons...

http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney03012006.html

The question of 'imperial conquest' presents several problems in my mind:

First- You're missing the point. The right to humanitarian intervention does not spring fully completed from the mind of George Bush or John Bolton, nor does lambasting them solve the problem at hand. Intervention rests on a discursive facade that places life as the central question of sovereign politics and that uses human suffering as the fundamental 'stuff' of its rule. This strategy suffers from a similar flaw in the immediate sense. Just as intervention may end up eliminating people with the guns but not eliminating the global poverty/oil politics that produced such a catastrophe, this 'anti-imperial' intervention against Bush only caps the tailpipe of the engine that drives global violence. There are equally important questions to be asked about personal practices involved with both the genocide and the intervention, and putting it on Bush or 'the paper of record' scapegoats them at the cost of personal reflectionl

Second- indefensible. Litterally, this forces people into defense of the government of Sudan which is funding a god damn genocide with oil money. Slice it any way you please but there are a whole lot of people being driven away from their homes and lives in Darfur and that isn't something that should be written off, ignored, passed over or anything similar. These figures don't immediately ally themselves with 'imperialism' (in fact, a war funded by western oil money undertaken by an ally in the war on terror would seem to be just the oposite: an indict of 'imperialism' [whatever that is]) and should not be ignored.

Duncan