human being on Sat, 8 Mar 2003 19:13:30 +0100 (CET) |
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<nettime> edges of the unknown |
resend... # Date: Fri Mar 7, 2003 12:55:27 AM US/Central # To president@whitehouse.gov, nettime-l # Cc secretary@state.gov edges of the unknown - online and offline The most intangible of ideas is attempted to be communicated, which at first was to relate oil and international politics, with today's online technologies and communities. The running hypothesis has been that oil has had something to do with current world affairs, possibly a predominant role, yet as a central/defining role or primary cause for immediate war between the U.S.A. and Iraq, is another matter it seems. This is to say that when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave the world assurances that Iraqi oil would not be used as a 'spoil of war' and that the U.S.American agenda was not to capture Iraqi oilfields, a different agenda was repurposed from the then current stagnating view. Since then, 'democratization' of Iraq has become more and more serious a platform issue for warfaring in the short-term. Reasons for this may have secondary and long-lasting strategic importance, to protect the region from instability and world oil markets from political unknowns. Even when the U.S.American stance included Middle-East peace plans, on a theoretical drawing board, and a strategic vision was laid out that gave a semblance of a wishful but illusive future-- things continued spinning. -- Out of control? In a conceivable direction? Who would know or could decide this, if everyone is confused, or so it may be wondered aloud. On the eve of war, the U.S. President of the 'most powerful nation on Earth' is televised in a speech, with a backdrop which looks like a sermon by a priest with lit candles and pulpit, to give his divinations. God, again, preceding U.S.American 'liberty' and nullifying 300 years of advancement of enlightenment reason and philosophy, for a private world view which is running like a train-wreck into world opinion, and for what? Belief. Individual belief, and private at that. Not necessarily wrong, but possibly mistaken or fundamentally flawed or misjudged belief which reason cannot penetrate. Whose reason? World reason. Back to time. Veritable information blackout of outside news and views, monoculture and monomediated, preprogrammed speech codes patterned after populist styles of diatribing for this and that. Speed, impatience, speed, impatience. Waiting, patience. Waiting, patiently, impatient. Now. Decision. Time. Speed, Time, Speed, Patience, Waiting, Impatience. Faith healers, time to pray it is said. Godly father and his holy son. A puritan nation-state challenges a world-state for predominance in being. In directing, in steering, in questioning, and acting. The U.N. could be deleted as an international institution in one fell swoop of diplomatic chaos, and after the League of Nations and the United Nations, there is unlikely to be a third national symbolic-government body, unless it is indeed global, of world-order, and has actual power beyond individual states and internal political bureaucracies and counter-productions. Up to this time there has been no way out, or so many have believed. When one amasses a quarter million troops in a desert and on ocean going vessels, they are there for a temporary period, a limited period in which to act. This wager was placed on the table- it may be the ultimate in a 'containment' strategy, to force action, itself a diplomatic show of force which apparently, because of the complexity, is foggy at best in its results, to wait is to lose the advantage of action, and in the end, to take on greater and greater risks. Who cares is an important question, as when self-interest is taken to its extremes, it is no one. The U.S. President George W. Bush _must act, it is said. To have amassed all of these troops, and to play this waiting game-- it is absurd! say the pundits and professional analysts, who worry, strategically of having all of one's eggs in one basket. That is, placing all of one's money on a single Big Bet, and hoping, no, praying for a payoff. In a warped, twisted, ideological, and basically utopic vantage, but possibly also realistic in a certain slanted sense, it may be a necessary action. Who can doubt that on some level, a holy war is being waged, whether one wants to agree to these terms or not? Whether or not to meet aggression on its own terms is ponderable, Crusades 2003 and all, yet the religious components are active in all politics in the regions being addressed, and U.S. politics have gone generations backwards (or, retro-fitted the present day into a mythical religious-statist past). There is no choice, yet there is a choice that becomes very clear as one option that is 180 degrees from current trajectories, and would turn the tables on all actions and tensions for the better, and refocus agendas. Who is to say? No one, just another person, wondering aloud. And it has been said, of the temporary and time-limitations of soldiers on ships, and in desert heat, that action must occur in a certain time-frame. And, tactics are built around the delaying of this time-frame. And the basic question is put to the antagonist, Saddam Hussein: He decides, war or no war. This is a mistake. The U.S.American President decides if the U.S. goes to war, and the rhetoric shows the flaw in the logic, and control of the entire diplomatic process around the control, mismanagement, and illusory advancement, stopping, and rewinding of time on Einstein's relativity watch. To invert such a situation, world leaders pretending, with the United Nations in the balance, would require a new coup of interdependent cooperation to do what is most necessary, firstly, and with intensity. One of the most major of al Qaeda figureheads was captured last week, and it is very big news, and yet pales in comparison to the looming U.S.-Iraqi war. Yet, it should be reconsidered as a significant centerpiece of a new strategic realignment, if one is actually fighting the most immediate threat of the 'war on terror' and dealing with the issues related most immediately to 9/11 and in response to that aggression, which many nations do find shared destinies in addressing. So too, the reignition of the Middle-East conflict and the sadistic ritualistic murders of Israeli and Palestinian citizens, its precipice reached and waiting detonation. In addition, questions of Afghanistan stability and that of Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden is reported to himself be hiding out, in a protected cultural enclave. What if the U.S. President did the unthinkable, and requestioned the U.S. position, asked anew 'what to do' with all the staged forces, and 'gave inspections' the time they needed for international diplomacy? By delaying any warfaring in Iraq via remotely deployed U.S. forces, the Iraqi defense, over time, would crumble in its falsehoods, at the same time international order would be repaired and rebuilt, diplomatic relations reconstituted for common aims. And, as forward forces, and under United Nations supervision, U.S.American forces could broker their deployment to the places it is most needed, for world stability, and make headway into issues another direction from increasing chaos by invading Iraq at this time, in this time, in this way at this very time. Time. Timing. Controlling when the alarm goes off, how it goes off, one needs to know how to turn the dials and press the buttons to make the clock work, 'like clockwork' as is said. Iraq will take care of itself, in time, it is said by those closest to the system. In this situation. So, what if the U.S. American troops forward deployed were instead to redeploy, and rotate in and out of their positions for a temporary stay, in the Middle-East, with large contingents of soldiers posted in _both Israel and Palestine. And, with U.N. backing, and additional forces, to attack one is to attack the United Nations, including those retaliatory measures. In this way, the main target of the delusional Saddam Hussien, who dreams of overtaking Israel, can be nullified through defensive positioning of both the U.S., Palestinians, Israel, and the United Nations. Other Arab states who are targets of reprisal for siding with the U.S. in this conflict would be further protected by retaining of U.S. forces in the region, as temporary peacekeepers. And, those students in Iraq, Iran, and other Arab nations, including whole realms of culture and vast repositories of intelligence and imagination that have yet to meet an eager world- would find their supporters nearby, should they decide to delicately transform from religious to secular governments, in a possibly utopic state of day-dreaming for an observer, but nonetheless, a reasonable future to join other nations of the world. Another large contingent of troops, those who are having a difficult time getting off the ships and onto Turkish military bases, could also become prime factors in the 'war on terror' by directly engaging enemy forces and stabilizing regions near the Afghanistan border with Pakistan. To base forces here, temporary and rotating, would reallocate those forces for invasion, and put them to use for a purpose internationally of shared purpose, to pursue the terrorists and senior Taliban officials, and to do this is to squeeze them where they are, with the help of the neighboring states. If Pakistan's troops were to push towards Afghanistan and U.S. troops towards Pakistan, and indeed this 'safe haven' is where bin Laden and others are lying dormant, potentially passing hand-written notes that would limit their travel to 1-3 days by courier (truck or horse, for instance), then a geographic locale should be approximated, and forces deployed to directly fight the terrorist threat, where it is, in cooperation and coordination with other nations. This retasking of troops would have the benefit of fulfilling the U.S. obligation to help secure the fledgling Afghanistan, and offer long-term and substantial help in assuring its future is brighter than its past. To do this would require rethinking the grand strategy, and inverting the issues of time through spatial tactics would put pressure on places, not on pieces of paper or logistical limitations, and would open up more possibilities, possibilities for peaceful solutions to problems, time, world support through the United Nations, a more true democratization through shared self-determination and representation, and also shared support in terms of money, diplomacy, and many types of power projection in which the U.S. could do what is both best for it and the world, now. It would be a surprise to Saddam Hussien, and maybe even Osama bin Laden, as it is not the expected path, as is the invasion of Iraq, which could have been planned for for a year now, in advance, to foil various strategies well in the public realm, for timing, attacks, vulnerabilities, et cetera. An open-strategy which is actually a good strategy need not necessarily be 'secret' if it is the best move available, to which opponents cannot counter through usual means. Why all of this? Talk talk talk. Well, some write about 'no war' and a few about 'for war' but what about how-to move towards peace, with the potential use of force, but even peaceful force, for the right reasons? Utopic, surely, but not for diplomats. It is a conceptual framework upon which to strategize movements in space-time. Light-speed or dead still. It has to do with the many peoples one meets online, from the same nations now at odds in the Security Council, but much further beyond that. People one has never met, in countries that may be embroiled in the chaos of war and fury and to be a citizen of a country many perceive as an aggressor, in one or many views, rightly so, and why even offer an alternative-- why not just let it all burn? Whatever one's morality or ethical outline, sometimes people are the most important body politic. That is, maybe it is about Oil in some regard, but also weapons of mass destruction. Maybe it is about the U.S. not changing, and telling the world it is irrelevant. And, maybe it is long pent-up angers revealing themselves, to the point that the North Korean nuclear situation can be left by the international community to buzz around like a fly at a U.N. trashcan. What about people. The people one knows or briefly encounters. Uncertain if every University is similar in this way, or even high-schools, but one experience here, in the U.S. is that one can meet people from all over the world in school. And, more and more, in local communities, as immigration patterns have changed their geographies. It is a delicate subject that after months of contemplation it is still unknown how to correctly write about without causing unnecessary problems in trying to discuss something very positive- and that is, people, and their interconnections, and their differences, and similarities, whether or not they are U.S.American citizens or visitors, that at least here there is little difference, culturally, as at a certain point everyone is a U.S.American, through popular or other culture, which is not always a bad thing, as it unites in ways that religion and other ways cannot. As an idea open to interpretation, and sometimes hijacked and made for the worse, but still, there is a diamond-in-the-rough here. A hidden beauty, in dreams, aspirations, beliefs, and a type of general respect. Though, this is also a limitation, a well-known myopia, where U.S.American realities are believed by inhabitants of this surreal place to be the default for the remaining fiction that is the world beyond its naive self. In any case, there is a type of cultural cross-pollination, of ideas, cultures, peoples. This is to say that yes, having met people from Egypt, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, India, China, Russia, many Eastern European countries, many as students in classes, as people, people one may say 'hi' to or acknowledge but never really know, or who may strike friendships with, temporarily or longer-term. The countries are always shifting, but they include cab drivers from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia. They are people one cares about, their health and safety. Just as, if having exchanges via e-mail, one may care about the welfare of another kindred human. It is that strangeness of hearing from a someone from yesteryear of how the Jews and Arabs were tied together through common ancestry, and how when they were close to eachother, in the U.S., there is an unspoken way of acknowledging they are of the same world- some type of recognition of the other. The opposite of what seems to be happening in the Middle-East and with the U.S. and Iraq and the United Nations and the entire world right now, offline of course, but even online, a similar hegemony of misguided control, of institutions and ideas and opportunities for change. With one's heart, one can feel for the students and artists in Iran, in Iraq, and fascinate at untold cultural riches of Pakistan and India, of Eastern Europe and Russia, and of Africa, Asia, and South America being included in shared global strategies focused around people, and their needs, not power and bombs and war. Ideal, yes, but tangible is the love one feels for another one meets, who remains in the memory, whose strife becomes entangled in another's life, through human impact, through the interaction, the beautiful creative clash of imaginations and energies and ideas and ways of being and seeing and believing. And compromise, and collaboration, cooperation, and freedoms to expand the world as wide as the web that ties every disparate part into that unbelievable whole. Maybe this is why 'no war' is as simple as this- people. Today, killing another is killing one's neighbor- that global village phenomenon. It is not anonymous, nor clean, nor will it be forgotten. Nor must such a type of decision, war, be made in haste. That is, impatience. By the clock, check-in for four-years of work, check-out, getting something done while on the job, regardless of the rest of the world's management system.... The United States could successfully invert this situation to its vast advantage by letting go of time-lines and recompiling the lines-of-force via strategic spatial placements, to reinforce and enforce and protect and serve the world order, not usher in its rapid and vast decay. By allowing the power of huamn reason to predominate the decision making process of procedural political decision making, Saddam Hussien and others do not decide if 'we' go to war, 'we' decide. And, at this time, that is, at this very singular time on the relativistic clock, it may be in the best interests of everyone, including the U.S. to allow time, to allow endurance, patience, skill, craft, and perserverence to prevail. This, written as an act of conscience given that as there is oil, there are also all of the people, the relationships, the complexities, that in no way can be so simply dismissed in this situation to validate the quick urgency provoked by bad planning, for war, but necessary for a strong containment force, which sets the stage for a second strategy. There is no such thing as time, only a belief, a construct, 'there is all the time in the world', and the world is telling 'U.S.' there need be more time, so let us take more time. And restrategize the moment. And instead of talking about what one is eventually going to do, that is, with Middle-East peace, or Afghanistan's reconstruction, or finding and destroying the al Qaeda terrorist networks- that these are done before a war with Iraq, in an extremely dedicated sense. If truly no choice has been made, then the best choice is still an option on the table. And a better choice presents itself, an inversion, turning the tables, and re-establishing critical relationships through renewed diplomacy and goodwill, to bring the world back into the whole as it can be experienced in the United States, as citizens, and how this and other conflicts play out internally, to a disturbing degree that simplistic falsehoods cannot be tolerated, for we may needlessly be killing our neighbors, and ourselves, and our future in the process. Time to change. Part III of the Oil Commentaries, copyright free 2003. # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: majordomo@bbs.thing.net and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@bbs.thing.net