Reply #74: Brilliant article!

[teryang]

<The illegality of so much of what the U.S. is doing in Iraq is a direct consequence of the illegality of the occupation itself, and a restoration of legitimacy remains the necessary first step to resolving the crisis.>

Is there any doubt that a truly sovereign Iraq would repudiate the invasion and occupation, assume a hostile posture toward Israel and its sponsor, and promptly reverse the expropriation of national assets under occupation rule?

This is the real reason the neo-con agenda rejects the rule of international law. The fault lines of Straussian nihilism, absorbed during the fascist era, completely repudiate the enormous sacrifices and efforts of the "greatest generation." The neo-cons are an extremist group operating on behalf of corrupt corporate elites who now dominate the nation's policy apparatus. They have established as a national policy a fascist doctrine that law doesn't apply to foreigners, that foreigners have no human rights, and that subtrefuge and deceit are the currency of international and domestic discourse rather than truth and justice. It's historical underpinnings are found in Machiavelli's works which laud the role of the dictator during wartime and the role of creative or pre-emptive war in the effort to shore up the legitimacy of princes with questionable claims to political rule. The Nazis also were great afficionados of this tact, which ultimately reduced even the corporate puppeteers to the tyranny of the state dictatorship.

These so called "intellectuals" in the Pentagon, "justice department," NGOs, and press, are the vanguard of the dictatorship of a society, democratic in name only. They have buried our history and misrepresented our fundamental principles, in pursuit of money and power for themselves to the lasting detriment of freedom, commerce and security at home and abroad. Because there is no lasting constructive application that results from violation of international law and human rights, their expedient and necessary juggling act of belligerence and fraud results only in a steadily deteriorating circumstance.

Such developments, left unchecked, will ultimately come to a bitter and diastrous end.