Re: The Coming World Police System

From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Sun Apr 27 2003 - 22:45:14 MDT

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    What is amazing here is that we all seem to agree on the problem, though
    how to solve it leads inevitably to contentious debate.

    One can go to the mountaintop, as it were, making of himself a Stalin
    (for a while) and ponder the remaking the world in a better image.
    Everything will be fine and dandy (after the initial 100 days of terror,
    of course). One can think in realpolitic and ignore the individual
    reality on the ground (as in, for example, dead Iraqi children).

    One can ignore libertarian and extropian approbriations against violent
    coercion, or Founding Fathers' disdain of foreign entanglement; after
    all, those Founders didn't face nano or bio driven world-armageddon
    scenarios. Morality must take a back seat to reality, eh?

    Such has been a morality play often seen on television shows like Star
    Trek and the like where the temptation is to kill a few to save the
    many. For me, one of the best answers (from such a show) was the Babylon
    5 episode where Delenn sparred with the inquisitor (who turned out to be
    Jack the Ripper). Delenn's answer was that she defended *all life*, that
    such defense was *local* (dealing with threats around her).

    Personally, I've long been a fan of Israel. I've read several histories
    of her founding, such as _Oh Jerusalem!_ and _Genesis 1948_, plus
    several more histories of her wars, including such as Moshe Dayan's
    _Diary of the Sinai Campaign_ (the '56 war).

    And yet I wonder if the armageddon threat isn't here now. Certainly the
    United States, along with the vast majority of nations, could survive
    and come back even after multiple nuclear attacks, while it seems Israel
    could be destroyed utterly with only 1 to 3 sizable nuclear blasts. It's
    a very small country.

    As Phil Osborn makes clear, it would be much better to straighten the
    world out under a anarcho-capitalist systemm as there are many problems
    with the current state doing it. Perhaps the algorithm then would be:

    IF world-about-to-destroy-itself AND no-anarcho-capitalist options
    THEN make-worldwide-police-state

    But I wonder if the US administration is instead operating under:

    IF Isreal-facing-annihilation
    THEN make-worldwide-police-state

    And I think a lot of the Christian Right in this country want to ensure
    that Israel remains, so they can say I-told-you-so when Jesus comes
    back. (Probably the result of an intellectual inferiority complex, as
    the Jews are possibly the most progressive and intelligent peoples on
    the planet).

    Now, the antiwar movement 'failed' to stop the war, but it's possible
    they had a moderating influence. I appreciate that the Pentagon planners
    went to pains to avoid civilian casualities. If any of that was in any
    way related to the universal protests, then truly the antiwar movement
    had an effect.

    I have heard of games of Pong being played on the big screen at football
    games. The audience shows a red or green card, the cumulative effect
    moves the paddle up or down. One does what one can, if too much analysis
    is done to determine which card to show, one misses out on the game. For
    me, the war was like this: many good reasons to attack, many good
    reasons to not attack. I decided the latter were better and thus held an
    antiwar position.

    Contrast this with the pro-war majority, most of whom think that war has
    become so quick 'n' easy we might as well take on Syria next.

    Hey, maybe if there's a Greater Israel from the Mediterranean to the
    Euphrates, it wouldn't be so vulnerable to a couple nukes, and we could
    put off the liberty-vs-police-state decision for a few more decades.
    That's why I'm waiting for the 'Palestinian Relocation Zones' to appear
    on the map of Iraq....

            -Mike

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