March 24, 2003
This historical remembrance captures the history of the contradiction at the heart of hegemonic powers. It is one between being an enlightened bearer of liberal civilization and employing the ferocious methods of coercion in the pre-emptive strike.
The sounds of liberation and freedom are to heard amidst the cries of misery and vengeance. Historical remembrance is a way to counter the idealist allure of the positive utopia of liberal democracy flowering in the Middle East after the liberation of Iraq.
Dialectics is a counter to the smooth spin of the soothsayers hired by the powerful to say that the future shaping of the Middle East by the US is controllable and manipulable.
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I'm not sure how the language of contradictions and dialectics is going to help here. Contradictions occur within a given body of thought. Between competing bodies, it is not surprising that force carries the day. I don't think that English-speaking democracies quite fit Hegel's notion of perfect politics, but I think he would understand this war as part of the end of history, i.e., the inevitable spread of freedom throughout the world. Hegel's notion of the cunning of reason does not demand that the liberators be pure. Nor does his notion of history convey the sense that progress can happen in any way other than conflict. Indeed, I believe most of us are much more sensitive to violence than Hegel was.
(I assume you are talking of contradiction and dialectics as Hegelian terms. If you are using more Marxist notions, my comments might not apply.)