Wolfowitz - the architect of the Iraqi war; the author of the Platonic, Straussian, ‘ Noble Lie,’ designed to explain to the vulgar masses of the American public why war with Iraq was beneficial and necessary - has done it again.  This time Wolfowitz, as the unqualified and certainly undeserving leader of the World Bank, was discovered of nepotism by giving his girlfriend an outrageously hyperbolic raise that made her salary exceed many of the professionals at the World Bank who are not only qualified to perform their jobs, but execute their responsibilities without committing persistent ethical infractions. 

Wolfowitz has become for me a character of great interest - certainly not for his intellect or any quality that could remotely be interpreted as positive - but for his tragic character flaws that supersede the previously conceivable.  A Greek Tragedy would refrain from constructing a tragic hero such as Wolfowitz because it would border upon the satirical and lack any realistic qualities leading to catharses, because his character would be so unbelievable that the audience would lose their trances of suspended disbelief, when viewing the performance of the play. 

The hubris of Wolfowitz - the once esteemed neoconservative ideologue - is so abundant that it is surreal.  This individual still thinks of himself in this Straussian defined elitist philosopher class of social identify, when he has demonstrated, time and time again, to be a resounding idiot; a baffling idiot who is largely responsible for one of the greatest disasters in American history; the war in Iraq. 

Nevertheless, Wolfowitz persists in his arrogance as if he would be absent personality without it; an existential requisite which if negated by some remarkable realization by Wolfowitz that he is one of history’s great fools, if not the greatest, he would suffer from an the anxiety of standing over the cliff of oblivion, coming to the cognizance that if he was not inflated with pompous arrogance and vacuous foreign policy theory, he would be nothing at all.

With those rather kind and forgiving remarks upon our contemporary national court jester, I leave you with a republication of the following journalistic account of the follies of Wolfowitz by the Chron.com.

Russell Cole

Business news

April 13, 2007, 5:15PM
Wolfowitz’s friend says she’s the victim

By JEANNINE AVERSA AP Economics Writer
© 2007 The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The woman at the heart of the controversy that has embroiled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz says she is a victim and was forced into a job transfer because of their relationship.

Shaha Riza’s comments are included in new documents released by the World Bank on Friday that also show Wolfowitz had a direct hand in arranging her promotion and generous pay package. Wolfowitz is fighting to retain his job.

Riza said that at no time did she report directly to Wolfowitz and that he had proposed to recuse himself from any decisions involving her to avoid a potential conflict of interest.

She said the ethics committee of the World Bank’s board had required her “to go on external assignment contrary to my wishes.”

Riza was moved to a high-paying job at the State Department in September 2005. “I have now been victimized for agreeing to an arrangement that I have objected to and that I did not believe from the outset was in my best interest,” she said.

Her comments were made in a memo to an ad hoc committee of the World Bank looking into the circumstances surrounding her transfer.

Wolfowitz has said he made a mistake and has apologized for his role in Riza’s promotion. The White House expressed fresh support for Wolfowitz on Friday.

However, some of the bank’s staff have called for him to resign.

The World Bank’s board has been looking into the matter, which has overshadowed this weekend’s meetings of the 185-nation World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

A bank official said the board was not discussing the Wolfowitz matter on Friday but was focusing on the meetings. The bank’s mission is to fight poverty and improve living standards for the poor. It lends about $20 billion a year for various projects.

Before her transfer to the State Department, Riza worked as a communications adviser in the bank’s Middle East Department. In her memo, Riza said she did not want to be assigned to duties away from the bank and did not expect “any special considerations.”

She lamented “vicious public attacks” she said she has received over the matter. The episode, she said, has affected her “professionally, physically and psychologically.”

The packet of documents released by the World Bank included new details about Wolfowitz’s involvement in Riza’s job transfer.

Two months after arriving at the bank on June 1, 2005, Wolfowitz sent a memo to the bank’s vice president of human resources, laying out details concerning Riza’s employment and compensation.

“I now direct you to agree to a proposal which includes the following terms and conditions,” Wolfowitz instructed. “You should accept immediately her offer to be detailed to an outside institution of her choosing, while retaining bank salary and benefits.”

The Wolfowitz memo went on say that Riza should receive a promotion, draw a salary of $180,000 and get annual pay increases of 8 percent.

Before the job change, Riza was believed to be getting paid close to $133,000. After the transfer, she received $193,590, according to the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group.

Riza remains on the World Bank’s payroll though she left the State Department job in 2006 and now works for Foundation for the Future, an international organization that gets some money from the department.

When asked what Riza does at the foundation, State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey on Friday said his “best understanding” was that she is an adviser to the foundation’s board. “I do not have a job description for her, no,” he said.

Riza’s pay package has led to accusations of favoritism from bank employees. The World Bank’s staff association wants Wolfowitz to resign. So does presidential hopeful John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina who weighed in Friday.

“America’s ability to lead in the fight against global poverty is undermined with Paul Wolfowitz at the helm of the World Bank,” Edwards said. He said Wolfowitz’s tenure at the World Bank has been marked by some of the same “failures as his term managing the war in Iraq — cronyism and rhetoric that does not match reality — and now serious questions of financial integrity.”

President Bush appointed Wolfowitz — a main architect of the Iraq war when he served as deputy defense secretary — to the top job at the World Bank. The appointment was greeted with protests by international aid and other groups.

The United States — the bank’s largest shareholder — is standing by Wolfowitz during the current turmoil. “The president has confidence in Paul Wolfowitz and his work at the World Bank,” said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Joaquin Almunia, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, didn’t speak directly about Wolfowitz’s ability to continue leading the bank, but suggested there is concern.

“It seems there has been a scandal. I don’t know what the consequences will be,” Almunia said. “I have been this morning with the European secretary directors of the World Bank and they have transmitted to me that it is a real concern.”

Tags: economics
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I am going to take the liberty to republish an article by Dave Lindorff that was originally posted on Populist America.  After reading the Case for Impeachment and seeing him interviewed several times, I fell in love with his writing and provacative - yet soberly sound - intellect - and wanted to make sure that those who might not make it over to Populist America today get an opportunity to read another one of his fine contributions.

R Cole

April 11, 2007
by Dave Lindorff

The alleged torture of British Navy personnel by Iraqi Revolutionary Guards was page one news in the New York Times and other US publications on Saturday, and the outrage in America and Britain was almost universal.

According to the just released 15 captives, they were blindfolded, then forced to listen to guns being cocked, which led them to believe they might be executed. They were placed in isolation from one another, yelled at, and forced to confess to having trespassed in Iranian territorial waters.

These abusive treatments are all awful, and no one would want to have to endure them, but let’s be honest here: they pale in comparison to what American captives have been put through in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Guantanamo, and at various secret “black sites” around the world from Poland to Ethiopia.

People held in captivity by American forces–military and CIA–are known to have faced mock executions, to have been beaten to the point of death, and to have endured repeated water-boarding sessions. They have been forced to stay in stress positions for so long that they have suffered permanent muscular and neurological damage. They have been subjected to total sensory deprivation, such as we saw was applied to American captive Jose Padilla, to the point that they went insane. They’ve suffered extended sleep deprivation, have been left staked to the ground in desert sun, or left wet and naked for days in front of blasting air-conditioners. They’ve been attacked by dogs, sexually humiliated, raped, and forced to watch the desecration of their Korans.

There are also forms of torture applied which we don’t even know about–the reason provided by federal authorities for blacking out the testimony of captives at military tribunals in Guantanamo, and the reason two convicted “terrorists,” David Hicks and John Walker Lindh, had to sign gag agreements barring them from talking about the conditions of their captivity in public in return for reduced sentences.

(Article Continues Below)

If anyone wanted to know why President Bush’s authorization of torture by American forces was a criminal act, they should go talk to the freed British detainees. So far, no one has asked them what they think about countries that torture captives.

My guess is that they’ll say it’s a horrible idea, whoever does it.

So far, from what I’ve seen, none of the reports on the abusive treatment of British captives has made the connection to how American forces are torturing captives in their custody.

This is shoddy journalism at its worst.

So far, nobody in Congress, including Sen. John McCain, who once tried to pass a torture ban only to have it gutted by presidential signing statement, has said anything about this case-book example of blow-back of America’s use of officially sanctioned torture of captives.

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Dave Lindorff [send him email], is an award-winning investigative reporter who has been working as a journalist for over 33 years. He writes frequently for Salon.com, BusinessWeek, The Nation, and many other publications.  Dave’s most recent book, The Case for Impeachment, is now available.  Find all of Dave Lindorff’s works on his website, www.thiscantbehappening.net.

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Intelligence, psychology and human heart needed for success in war, peace

By Steve Hammons

In trying to understand terrorism, the invasion and occupation of Iraq and the many other problems facing Americans and the international community, the study of human psychology is a useful place to start.

There are many ways to interpret human behavior and the psychology behind it. Often behavior and psychology are interpreted inaccurately. Still, it is helpful to take a good, hard look at human nature, the human mind and the human heart.

For example, it is a well-known concept in the field of psychology that victims of abuse often then go on to become abusers themselves. The victim becomes the perpetrator.

This is worth examining at many levels including interpersonal relationships among individuals as well as relationships between larger groups of people. Is this concept applicable to whole organizations, communities, peoples or even nations? Is it relevant to current international affairs, genocides and the global war on terror?

In efforts to make progress of various kinds, nations can use the “hard power” of bullets and bombs or “soft power” of persuasion, information, psychological operations (PSYOP), open-source intelligence (OSINT) information and other resources and assets.

Using these methods effectively and constructively requires insight into human behavior, human psychology and the human emotions involved.

VICTIM-PERPETRATOR AND REVENGE

The victim-becomes-perpetrator syndrome is similar to that of revenge, but not always quite the same. (Of course, one man’s “revenge” is another man’s “justice.”)

Revenge is often somewhat intelligently targeted against persons or groups who committed the offense against the party seeking revenge. It makes sense in a way. In the victim-becomes-perpetrator pattern, really any convenient victim might do.

However, revenge can also become diffused and not precise with its target. An Iraqi may believe he must take revenge, or in his view, achieve justice, if a U.S. air strike inadvertently killed or injured innocent family members.

To facilitate this revenge, the Iraqi might just try to kill any American soldier or Marine, even if that soldier or Marine had nothing to do with the death or injury to the Iraqi family member. Patterns like this among Iraqis themselves are obviously in play as well.

These patterns can become so severe that is some cases perpetrators may look at their victims not only as “different” or “inferior,” but as almost non-human. This makes it easier to minimize human empathy with another person or group of people, or even to get pleasure from their suffering.

The victim-turns-perpetrator concept and the revenge-and-payback cycle are also related to the maxim that “power corrupts.” Having power over other people on whom abuse is perpetrated is another aspect of the gratification in this emotional, psychological and behavioral pattern. More power over others and taking personal power away from others has a corrupting influence.

Personal power, of course, is part of the social and psychological dynamic of marriages, families, communities, organizations, societies, nations and the world order. Power is part of the fabric of healthy relationships and unhealthy relationships. It is part of democracies as well as totalitarian or fascist societies.

The well-known “Stanford Prison Experiment,” sometimes simply called “the Zimbardo study,” is often cited in discussions of this kind. In 1971, Stanford University Professor Phillip Zimbardo conducted a psychological experiment using average university students to role-play being prisoners and guards in a makeshift prison.

In a short time, the “guards” started showing sadistic traits and abused the prisoners. The “prisoners” became depressed and showed extreme stress. The circumstance of one group having tremendous, and dehumanizing, power over the other powerless group had a very corrupting and damaging influence on both groups. (For more information see “The Stanford Prison Experiment” at http://www.prisonexp.org/)

AMERICA AND 9/11

Another possible example is close to home. When America was attacked on 9/11, about which many questions remain, we perceived ourselves as victims of a horrible crime, and understandably so. Heartfelt emotions about the attacks were strong.

As part of our social and military response, an element of retaliation was clearly part of the scenario. You could call it “strategic response,” or some other term if you like, and that would be accurate. An element of revenge or payback certainly was also a factor.

Politicians and people behind the scenes reportedly manipulated this psychological response to justify the invasion of Iraq and other questionable activities.

It has also been debated in recent years as to whether this psychological and emotional response to the 9/11 attacks influenced our military forces in the field. Were some of them feeling a need for revenge, payback, or justice for 9/11?

Has this affected interrogation methods and the treatment of suspects and prisoners? The treatment of prisoners or “detainees,” the use of torture and “almost-torture” methods may be directly related to the feeling of justified response and retaliation.

This has led to a serious discussion about prisoner treatment guidelines under U.S. law, the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, international law, international treaties and the Geneva Conventions were interpreted by U.S. civilian government lawyers and military JAG attorneys. There was reportedly a significant amount of variation in these interpretations.

Then, how were these interpretations applied by our military intelligence, “other government agencies (OGAs)” and private contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq (and undoubtedly elsewhere)?

Since the invasion of Iraq, reliable reports say hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis, including women and children, have been killed as a result of the invasion. Did the pattern of victim-becomes-perpetrator, the cycle of revenge-and-payback come into play here too?

RECOGNIZING DANGEROUS PEOPLE

We often hear that there are bad people in charge of certain nations and organizations in the world. We are told that these people are dangerous, that they are willing to harm and kill others needlessly, including the innocent and women and children, and that they want power, war and violence rather than peace.

We are told that these leaders do not respect human decency, that they are cruel and full of their own misguided beliefs. That they are very willing to send others to their deaths. That they use fear and terrorism to accomplish their goals.

And we hear that it would be better for the world if these kinds of people were removed and brought to justice. We are told that it takes intelligence, strength and courage to identify these people accurately and then to take the necessary steps to apprehend them and implement justice.

There does seem to be much truth to these claims. The challenge for us now may be to look closely at all factors involved in many situations, then honestly face the sometimes unpleasant realities and complexities about these dangerous individuals and groups, near and far.

Some of them are overseas in distant foreign countries around the world. Some of them are here in our own nation. They may be part of a criminal enterprise interested in money. They may claim that are fighting for good or God, that God wants them to wage war and bring death and destruction. They may be inside or outside of governments. They may simply be disturbed human beings. Or, all of the above.

They may have many followers who cannot think for themselves or who are easily manipulated. Followers who prefer to be led by charismatic personalities, no matter that the leadership is flawed, dishonest, misguided and even psychologically and spiritually sick.

It seems true that we must open our eyes and clearly see these kinds of people for what they are. If we do nothing, if we choose to ignore the dangers and pretend they do not exist, we may risk terrible outcomes.

When we examine the attacks of 9/11 for example, there seems to be more to be learned about all aspects of the planning for the horrific events of that day.

In evaluating the invasion and occupation of Iraq and possible future wars, we see complicated situations and many disturbing aspects and elements involved. These are examples of the many serious ongoing challenges affecting the U.S. and the rest of the world.

It seems that recognizing dangerous people around us is sometimes simple, sometimes complex. Identifying the good guys and the bad guys can be easy at times, but it is not always as easy.

STRENGTH, HONOR, COMPASSION

I recently noticed these words emblazoned in gold letters on a red fire department truck in my community: “Serving with Strength - Honor - Compassion.”

It dawned on me that, although we read and hear words like these often, some people are very serious about living them. I thought about the combination of these three concepts, and how these three values work together.

How can strength, honor, compassion be integrated into our intelligence operations, psychological operations (PSYOP), open-source intelligence (OSINT) and ‘soft power’ in dealing with the Iraq war and terrorism?

Many times, individuals, groups and nations may grab on to the idea of strength or power, but use it unwisely. Strength or power may be used to dominate others, to abuse others, to do evil things. When strength is combined with honor and compassion though, it can be a force for good. Strength and power must be grounded in a solid moral and ethical foundation, or else it can turn ugly.

Strength and power may be two somewhat different things. Strength can imply protection, strength of character, strength of spiritual and ethical principles. Power can sometimes imply power over others, abuse of others and the misuse of strength.

But with honor and compassion added to the mix, strength becomes something to be used in an ethical way, in a way that upholds the dignity of human beings, as a force for good. Compassion, too, confirms our deeper spiritual nature as humans and links us to that higher, powerful force.

Strength, honor, compassion. How do they fit into our approaches to the complex situations in our daily lives, in our larger societies, the conduct of war, the image of Americans and in the functioning of the human race on this Earth of ours?

Thousands of our troops have been killed and severely wounded. Families and loved ones have been devastated with grief and loss. Psychological and emotional scars on troops and loved ones will continue for decades.

We wonder about the morality of torture, whether by our military and intelligence officers, or by those of other countries when we “outsource” torture and turn over prisoners to other nations through the “rendition” process. Have our military and intelligence personnel and contracted civilians been encouraged to engage in sadism in the name of intelligence gathering?

These are a few of the many serious questions that many of us ask ourselves. We think about them, ponder them, try to find answers. There are other difficult questions we often face in our individual lives, in our communities and nations.

Many of these things are sometimes morally confusing, or at least they are not morally crystal clear. Most of us try to be good and responsible people, moral and ethical people as we deal with these questions.

This is when we might need to focus on strength, honor, compassion. These words might help us find answers to these difficult and complex questions. We need all the help we can get. It’s not enough to ignore the questions, to let someone else make the decisions for us. Because they might make terrible decisions in our name.

To help us stay on a path that takes us in a good direction, to help keep us anchored in the storms, and to make progress in our efforts in this world, it may be worthwhile to keep in mind those words from the fire truck: Strength - Honor - Compassion.

INTELLIGENCE AGENTS

In a way, each one of us is an intelligence agent – “intelligence” in the broadest meaning of the word. Most of us have adequately intelligent minds. We have senses and common sense. We have spiritual intuition and gut instincts.

We gather open source intelligence in the form of reading newspapers, magazines, books, information on the Web and watching TV and films, as well as from life experiences and interactions with other people. And from this information we make assessments and evaluations, and we come to conclusions.

Deception, lies, and other forms of manipulation are elements we face in gathering information and trying to make sense of it. Things are not always what they seem, and sometimes we have to dig a bit deeper to find the truth of a situation.

In trying to understand what is going on in the world around us, people are often pushed and pulled by groups on this side or that side. Sometimes the individuals in groups may be sincere in their beliefs.

Yet, sometimes we may see “groupthink,” a herd mentality or a cult-like belief system that can invisibly take away individuals’ ability to look at things independently with a clear point of view. It can be very easy to go along with the group or the groupthink. Politics and religion are sometimes like this.

At times, we might find it easier to avoid or ignore the unpleasant and disturbing realities and the possibilities –- and we could wish we didn’t have the responsibility to face unpleasant truths.

But taking responsibility and being a kind of good intelligence agent is, in the end, rewarding and meaningful. In this way, we can be better prepared to face the threats of dangerous enemies from outside and from within. These are positive “psychological operations” that we can all be involved in.

OUR QUEST FOR SOLUTIONS

Increasing the use of positive human traits and virtues, while undoing and unraveling problematic and destructive patterns of individuals, groups and nations is not easy. The dynamics can be complex with patterns and habits hard to change.

However, the first step might be awareness, understanding and recognition of our all-too-human frailty, this human tendency to continue in cycles of violence, revenge, victims-becoming-perpetrators. These are human traits that we can all fall victim to – both we “good guys” and those other “bad guys.”

In that sad sense at least, we have a common enemy –- the darker side of human nature in all of us.

Then, maybe we could consider the severe dangers that these psychological/emotional patterns and resulting behavior may bring. During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union came close to possibly destroying the human race and planet Earth.

Now, in this current “global war on terror,” or “clash of civilizations,” or “undeclared World War III,” or however we might interpret it, there is again a very grave risk of things getting totally out of hand, totally out of control in destructiveness. Nuclear and biological weapons pose dangers beyond the imagination.

After recognizing and understanding these very severe dangers, maybe we could then realize that they can be a serious obstacle to the future evolution of the entire human race.

If we can overcome these human problems, humanity and this planet might have a very bright future. As dark as these days seem sometime, we may actually be on the verge of a new dawn for our children and our grandchildren. Very beautiful things may lie ahead.

To get there, to try to see past our problems with revenge, hate, victimization and abusive power, there are many uplifting sources of inspiration and guidance. They are found in writings of all kinds, in music and art, in sport, in Nature, in the beauty around us, in fellowship among people, in the faces and hearts of children.

These, too, are psychological operations and intelligence that we can cling to in these difficult times.

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An Article By:

Ben Tanosborn

Make all the jokes you want! Laugh to your heart�s content about Bush�s very limited vocabulary; or Americans� loyalty to one spousal language and only fling encounters with a few Tex-Mex dialects! Although we may not yet recognize it, this nation of ours has ceased to be a monolingual butt of embarrassment. We are now, officially to the world, fully bilingual. And thanks to our tutor-in-chief we have become fluent, overnight, in this mystery second language � well, perhaps not a mystery language to many of us.

Spanish, you think? Try something else. Could it be that Gallic parlez-vous? That�s way too refined and intellectual for us. And Russian is definitely a pass� lingo now that we know it hasn�t helped our Condoleezza much. As for the other European tongues, nah� they have too few people speaking them; and the other languages from the Orient are as inscrutable as the people who speak them.

If you are thinking Esperanto� well, that isn�t it. But you are getting warm, radioactively lukewarm; for the language Americans are being asked to master is Nuclearanto. Our neo-conservative caretakers have made this fission-Esperanto a very simple language for us to communicate political feelings and also properly punctuate demands; a tongue that requires neither vocal chords to communicate, nor reading signs, nor dactylic recognition; a language rooted in none of the accepted six language families but, instead, in the oldest and deepest of all human emotions: fear.

Yep, make no mistake about it; Americans have adopted a second national language: Nuclearanto; pronounced �Nucular-anto� by its principal speaker, and dean academician of this lingua universalis, George W. Bush. This dubiously awaited lingua universalis is finally here; not for science or for commerce, but for all necessary, even unnecessary, communication dealing with diplomacy, war� and, naturally, victors� peace.

Much of the world is now seeing something which they hadn�t seen before: a US willing to stay a benign nuclear power as long as it unconditionally gets its way; otherwise it�s back to mid-summer 1945 and what has become an all too-often comment in jingoistic parlance: �stop wasting time and resources, and let�s nuke them�; proving then and ready to prove now that Dr. Jekyll can turn into Mr. Hyde without even taking a drug. Do we dare tell anyone how often we get to hear the �let�s nuke them� epithet?

There is a more-than-slight difference, however, in the circumstances of sixty-two years ago and today; and to the horrors that were Hiroshima and Nagasaki we have added a new horror of pre-launch abusive fear. America, with a destructive arsenal capable of dyeing the entire green earth brown, has told the world in no uncertain terms that we have given ourselves consent to judge unilaterally when we might �feel� endangered, and react accordingly in a preemptive way. So any nation that may be looking at America or �its interests� cross-eyed, beware� for you may be asked to accept an inoculation of cruise missiles shoved up your a– as a warning salvo, something which is definitely a better option than becoming irremediably the next nuclear holocaust.

Are you listening, Iran? We are now speaking in vernacular Nuclearanto to you. Our Pentagon geniuses believe that a hundred cruise missiles ought to do the job, that way compliance with our �nuclear exclusiveness� requirements will be met without a hassle, and you�ll become predisposed for a regime change that could meet our approval for being Israel-tolerant. You�d wise to tell Majles, Expert-mullahs and Guardians to stop looking at the Persian Gulf as if it were an Arab-Iranian waterway and not the Mare Americanus it has really become. Sorry, but we have to be firm or next you�ll be telling us that we have no right to impose a maritime petrol-toll to cross the Strait of Hormuz; or that American carriers are ship-non-grata in either Persian or Oman gulfs. Let�s get it straight once and for all: the American Fleet has inalienable nuclear rights to navigate any waters on this planet it sees fit to protect American interests, corporate or military.

But America with its self-anointed rights to perform preemptive military strikes cannot be portrayed as fighting terrorists� only breeding them at a locust-spreading pace. And we can rest assured that there will be little change in the world until a significant number of Americans become enlightened and see it that way, then decide to have their own regime change � and by that I certainly don�t mean passing the reins of government to equally-hawkish Democrats. It needs to be a regime change that puts common sense in America�s head, soon; before everyone on this earth becomes fluent in Nuclearanto.

The proposition that any one country or any one people have the right to conduct preemptive massive attacks in today�s world takes a step beyond the absurd. In the case of a military superpower imposing its will on a much weaker adversary, it is nothing short of criminal. We are not dealing here with business or bridge games deterring, hindering or preventing situations from occurring� we are dealing with the human species and its survival. Acknowledging the right of preemption to the world, as Bush has already done, might as well be interpreted as denying our own descendants the right to exist.

� 2007 Ben Tanosborn

www.tanosborn.com

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Several years ago when I was looking at graduate schools to attend I was invited down to the University of Virginia in order to meet with some of the professors in the department. The gentleman who took me to dinner was of British nationality and fit the stereotypical mold of the mild mannered elitist who would contain his arrogance until provoked by a remark or challenge that he interpreted as an affront to his intellectual superiority.

During the conversation that ensued when dining at a decent restaurant, other than its hideous service - after all, rich college kids attending the University of Virginia do not break their backs when servicing others - I remarked that the current Prime Minister of the UK, Tony Blair, who of course was Labor, was a neoconservative. Taking exception to my assessment of Blair, the English academic subtly started to mock me, and continued to do so, because he continued to be provoked by my persistence and intransigence in upholding my opinion of the labor friendly Prime Minister as a neoconservative.

My assessment of the Prime Minister was not so much a reflection of his economic ideology, but, rather, knowledge of the fact that he was an Evangelical, which - at the time, and currently still - I associated with an intellectual disposition prone toward absolutism; the clear and indivisible distinction between right and wrong; truth and falsity; a faith in an inalterable reality where issues of moral significance contrast as black from white. Without such convictions, how else could one be presumptuous enough to feel justified in sustaining an effort to convert others to a belief system that has no empirical basis for confirmation; or, even, indication or suggestion. People of this persuasion consider their knowledge to be Ab Initio, and, consequently, beyond refute and exempt from falsification. In overt insincerity the Englishman said, “You obviously know a lot about English politics.”

My refusal to acquiesce to his intellectual authority stemmed from the association I had made at a relatively early age that belief in absolutes - whether it relates to religiosity or politics; both of which are intimately related with which to begin - results in a refusal to acknowledge the potential falsification of one’s own beliefs, because the absolute conviction supersedes the contingencies presented by the empirical experiences to which one is exposed. When one who subscribes to absolutes is faced with contrary events, he dismisses the observances with ad hoc contrivances, such as it is simply a test of faith; or it is a hardship that must be suffered, but neglects to qualify as justification for an alternative path of action because one must remain resolute in his moral fortitude; i.e., the tribulations emanating from the sacrifice of war that will eventually bring victory in Iraq, ending in democratization - the unquestionable state to which the processes of humanity’s maturation will materialize - and - in the longer term - this moral courage - the unwaveringly steadfastness in the Iraqi struggle will serve as a catalyst for the democratization of an entire geopolitical region.

The fact that Bush was a neoconservative was a given for me, since not only did he so obnoxiously wear his religiosity on his sleeve, he was also a product of the cultist culture of Alcoholics Anonymous. Blair was more subtle, but, nevertheless, the biographies I had read of him had convinced me that he had instilled in him from his Evangelical upbringing the intellectual disposition for absolutism that translates in political terms into neoconservatism - the absolute conviction that American, Western democracy is the correct and only appropriate form of a social formation for a people to assume; an arrogance that dismisses objections to its ethnocentrism as moral confusion or an attribute equivalent to a weakness in character.

Well, as the events of recent history have disclosed, Tony Blair is demonstrably a neoconservative, and if knowing more than a pompous academic from England about his own national politics qualifies as knowing quite a bit about the UK politics, then I suppose I am knowledgeable about English politics, which - if using the good professor as a standard - does not qualify as much, but, then again, I always entertain the fallibility of my beliefs.

Russell Cole

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