On War, Politics and Capitalism After 9/11

Abstract

9/1 1 represents less a tear in the fabric of history, or a break with the past, than an inflection in ongoing historical processes, such as the continued expansion of capitalism that at some recent time has supposedly attained the level of globalization. This paper will consider the relation of war and politics with respect to three instances arising in the wake of 9/1 1 , including the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq, and finally the global war on terror (GWT). Since human beings are social animals who live in a political context, nothing we do is wholly isolated from political considerations. 'Polities' can be understood in different ways, including the fact that human beings are born into and determined by the social context into which they are socialized, within which they learn to speak, whose ideas and ideals they take on, and so on. It can also be understood as the series of factors, both immediate and long-term, including considerations drawn from party politics as well as ideological sources, which influence attitudes toward war. At its best, politics concerns the question of the good life in society, for instance the difficult theme, which already concerned Plato, of justice in a social context. More often, it turns on a struggle for power that has little or nothing to do with justice. As concerns war, politics operates in different ways. These include the conception of war; its desirability or lack thereof; the decision to go or not to go to war; the conduct of the war; and the attitude one takes after the war is completed. Politics and war have probably never been dissociated. In the U.S., political considerations have recently played an important role after 9/11 in authorizing two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the GWT. This paper will examine the political dimension of the three wars into which the U.S. has entered since 9/11.1 will argue that these wars are superficially dissimilar, but that on a deeper level they all relate to a single ideological position that is an important motivation in current U.S. foreign policy, and that this position is further related to capitalism.