[Reader-list] Re: Sth. of sth. on Iraq

[pratap pandey]

Dear all,

There is no paucity of debate on Iraq (I don't like the way this phrase ends with "Iraq"; doesn't this steer the conversation along putatively paranoiac neo-Orientalist lines?). The fact that there is a debate on the paucity of debate on Iraq in the Sarai reader-list is one simple little proof of this. You could scan other lists, or websites. You would find an immense, teeming, daily updated archive of disbelief, support, anger, resignation, protest, counter-protest. Postings, forwarded news updates, comments on forwarded news updates, requests to sign and send letters to this or that Senator or parliamentarian, summaries of what world leaders are saying (or not saying), parodies of what world leaders are saying, speeches, analyses ('little' and 'big', 'economic' and 'metaphysical' ) -- in short, a huge completely unmanageable discourse, a completely chaotically human discourse on an event that looms over the world today. Many, many individuals and organisations are ensuring that not a word of what is said or officially spoken (or even unspoken) on "the debate on Iraq (sic)" remains private, or hidden.

Where is the "paucity"? Or is it the case that when we say "paucity" we actually mean "clarity"?

Given the amount of words (bytes, column-centimeters) being used on this issue, is this debate a symptom of an understandable inability to separate an item of "critique" from an item of "incitement"? If so, then are we sure we are not collapsing "ethical bewilderment" into "moral confusion"? I am not sure about this, but I sniff in this debate the desire for "absolutely clarity". By their nature, humans are quick to desire this; by their calculations, fascists are quicker to use this propensity. Either ways, it is a trap: the terrible telos of the death-drive, or the entirely distasteful experience of being grist to a holocaustic mill.      

My worry is: this event -- this war that the US wants to wage on Iraq; this extremely "public" event where everybody's going public, especially Presidents and Prime Ministers; this extremely well stage-managed effort to create global instability -- is succeeding. It is creating more and more paranoia. It is pressurising (and is continuously pressurising) people to decide, one way or the other, and so become paranoiac for ever more. It invokes justice, promises violation, and gives you a deadline to choose. It demands the principles of both humanity and atavism, and then tells you: you know which you want to go, don't you? This war-drumming, it is seductive. It can simplify your existence. 

My worry is: this continuous seduction by State of civil society might just be the best attempt to end (or halt, or attempt to drastically transform) the ability of humans to become more fully human. This is the best attempt, so far as I know, to seduce human beings into creating walls and fences in the way in which they interact with humans. The "war" is not, I propose, about the short-term goal of ousting Saddam. This "war" looks like a constant prolongation of tension; it is about the long-term goal of ensuring that no human crosses any border (or any kind of border), ever. 

I salute Bush. He is at a different level, much much beyond the Freikorps or the Hindu Jagran Manch. He promises nothing less than the death of the innate ability of humans to be dialectical.

pp                

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