heads list: two years old

Yesterday marked the two year anniversary of the first post to the heads list. 
We've come a long way since then.  The archive of 3,260 messages bears witness 
to the radicalization of a generation, induced by the belligerence of our 
nation.  If this is the case among predominantly white, well-educated, and 
privileged U.S. citizens, consider the implications for the world at large. 
Kolko is on to something when he says that Bush has accomplished what the left 
never could: isolation of and skepticism towards U.S. interests abroad and a 
massive mobilization of opposition towards U.S. hegemony (the other 
superpower).  The cold war has ended.  Conventional wisdom was worldwide 
military spending would implode, creating a "peace dividend."  A less 
confrontational international environment would release financial, 
technological, and human resources for development.  Instead we approach the 
$1 trillion annual worldwide spending mark ($100 billion more than the peak of 
cold war spending), half constituted by the U.S. alone.  We spend $11,000 a 
second on "defense," twice as much as we spend per year per child on 
education.  Likewise, intervention and confrontation are ubiquitous in our 
relations with the rest of the world.  The international environment is far 
more unstable and unpredictable.  Nearly 50 years of interventionist policies 
based on opportunistic alignments with oppressive regimes have resulted in the 
war coming to our homeland.  Have we heeded the warning of numerous failures 
in foreign policy since 1948?  No.  Instead we blindly stay the course of 
imposing an ad-hoc will on our neighbors, gratifying our immediate concerns 
militarily with no consideration of political solutions or long-term 
sustainability and peace.  The future is made in the present.  Today we wage 
an open-ended war on an open-ended enemy in order to militarily solve an 
essentially political problem.  We salt the earth with cluster bombs, depleted 
uranium, and the blood of innocent civilians that constitute 90% of the dead 
in "modern" warfare.  We torture.  We hate.  There is no hope in this present, 
and thus no hope in this future.  But we've awoken.  The belligerence has 
stirred us.  And today we will change our reality.

David

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