Eric Hobsbawm on the bizarre nature of the new American empire and the almost inexplicable idiocy of Bush-neocon policy choices.

The war in Iraq was an example of the frivolity of US decision-making. Iraq was a country that had been defeated by the Americans and refused to lie down: a country so weak it could be easily defeated again. It happened to have assets - oil - but the war was really an exercise in showing international power. The policy that the crazies in Washington are talking about, a complete re-formulation of the entire Middle East, makes no sense. If their aim is to overthrow the Saudi kingdom, what are they planning in its place? If they were serious about changing the Middle East we knowthe one thing they have to do is to lean on the Israelis. Bush's father was prepared to do this, but the present incumbent in the White House is not. Instead his administration has destroyed one of the two guaranteed secular governments in the Middle East, and dreams of moving against the other, Syria.

The emptiness of the policy is clear from the way the aims have been put forward in public relations terms. Phrases like "axis of evil", or "the road map" are not policy statements, but merely sound bites that accumulate their own policy potential. The overwhelming newspeak that has swamped the world in the past 18 months is an indication of the absence of real policy. Bush does not do policy, but a stage act. Officials such as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz talk like Rambo in public, as in private. All that counts is the overwhelming power of the US. In real terms they mean that the US can invade anybody small enough and where they can win quickly enough. This is not a policy. Nor will it work. The consequences of this for the US are going to be very dangerous. Domestically, the real danger for a country that aims at world control, essentially by military means, is the danger of
militarisation. The danger of this has been seriously underestimated.

Moreover, Hobsbawm is one of the few academics to point directly to the emperor's missing robes: the absurbedly unbrave wars of the US against weak and insignificant nations.

This is not to fault nor diminish the bravery as truly displayed by individual US soldiers in the immediate skirmishes of real combat.. Such personal bravery in real circumstances can not be, and never should be, gainsaid. No, the fault-finding is with the fraudulent nature of these mismatched "contests" hatched and promoted by chickenhawks.

It wasn't courage Goliath demonstrated when he marched out to squash David. Read the rest.