While You Slept
They lied us into war
by Justin Raimondo
Opponents of the Iraq war argued, in the run-up to the invasion, that U.S. policies would lead to chaos in the Middle East – without realizing that this is precisely what the War Party is hoping and working for. It’s not for nothing that Ledeen hails the transformative power of “creative destruction,” a phrase originally utilized to describe the economic benefits of competition, and borrowed by the War Party to convey a very different – the exact opposite – meaning. In the economic sense, the phrase refers to the peaceful competition of free traders in an open market, producing goods and services for the ultimate benefit of all, whereas in the neocon version it signifies destruction, rather than production, and a war of all against all.
Where Chaos is King
by Mark LeVine
The tolerance for disorder, it seems, is a clear sign of an archaic Muslim mentality at work. As a Marine spokesperson explained recently, after a deadly attack on American forces, “The insurgents are against progress and only desire a return to the ways of the seventh century.” No less a personage than Tony Blair was in agreement. Al-Qa’eda, he claimed, is engaged in a “premedieval religious war utterly alien to the future of humankind,” whose goal, according to his friend George Bush, is to “establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia.” Our goal is order. The urge to create chaos is not only pre-modern, it’s inherently theirs.
The problem with this narrative is that the neoconservatives, who were primarily responsible for launching the war on terror as well as the invasion and occupation of Iraq, have by and large not viewed chaos in this manner. For them, chaos has been not just an inevitable consequence of globalization, but a phenomenon that might be well used to further their long-term agenda of remaking the Middle East in America’s image. Indeed, as they saw it, it was only natural for the world’s first true hyperpower to adopt a historically well-tested policy of “creative destruction.” Their goal, as explained in the now famous comment of an anonymous administration official, was to “create our own reality” wherever we tread. (“We’re history’s actors,” he continued, “and all of you will be left to just study what we do.”)