This is a very interesting read and the parallels drawn are smart.
"Gee, no wonder the Iraqi Communist Party is so enthusiastic about the American occupation -- and was even appointed by former viceroy Paul Bremer to the Governing Council. As I wrote two years ago:
'The Communists, like the Americans, believe that the way to transform society and achieve the transition to true democracy is by establishing an 'interim' dictatorship: in the case of the former, it's the 'dictatorship of the proletariat,' while the Americans call their dictatorship the 'Iraqi Interim Authority.' But that's just semantics. Both want to forcibly modernize and secularize a deeply religious, consciously conservative society, and seek to 'liberate' women: both commies and neocons see themselves as 'progressive,' on the right side of history, and both have force at the core of their methods.
'There is really nothing all that odd about the Commie-neocon axis of 'liberation': it represents the reunion of the Bolsheviks with their long-lost Menshevik brothers.'
The conservative philosopher Claes Ryn calls the neocons who are running America into the ground 'neo-Jacobins,' and surely their methods -- including torture -- recall the reign of Robespierre in 'revolutionary' France. As Professor Ryn puts it:
'But 9/11 changed everything, the neo-Jacobins cry. Well, not quite everything. The human condition has not changed. Terrible events do not cancel the need for those personal qualities and social and political structures without which the will to power becomes arbitrary and tyrannical. Unfortunately, 9/11 gave the imperialistic personality another pretext for throwing off restraint.'
Will this era in America's story go down in history as the Bushevik Terror? Remember, though, what happened to the Jacobin leaders
in the end ..."
Antiwar.com Blog
