Foreign Policy?
P. Schultz
August 9, 2013
Someone
has noticed the connection between what we label “foreign policy” and what we
label “domestic policy,” creating the illusion that these are two separate
kinds of policy, each one dedicated to a different set of “problems” calling
for different sets of “solutions.” In fact, as I use to say to students all too
often, “foreign policy” almost always is formulated and practiced in the
service of “domestic policy.” So, if you think that the creation of our surveillance
state is meant to “solve” or help “solve” foreign policy issues, you have, as
my mother use to say, another think coming. [“If that’s what you think you are
going to do, Peter, you have another think coming.” Which I believe meant that
I was not going to do whatever it was I thought I was going to do!]
“It
is at least clearer that our world, our society, is becoming ever more imperial
in nature, reflecting in part the way our post-9/11 wars have come
home. With its widening economic inequalities, the United States is
increasingly a society of the rulers and the ruled, the surveillers and the
surveilled. Those surveillers have hundreds of thousands of spies to keep
track of us and others on this planet, and no matter what they do, no matter
what lines they cross, no matter how egregious their acts may be, they are
never punished for them, not even losing their jobs. We, on the other
hand, have a tiny number of volunteer surveillers on our side. The minute
they make themselves known or are tracked down by the national security state,
they automatically lose their jobs and that’s only the beginning of the
punishments levied on them.”
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