NEOCON INTENTIONALITY

NOTHING BUT MALICE

On 29-Jan 02, President George W. Bush announced, in his State of the Union address, that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea constituted an "axis of evil."¹ The expression "axis of evil" was reportedly the product of neocon thinking². This short essay investigates the origin, structure, and intentionality of this thinking.

How Can We Uncover Hidden Intentionality? According to the Jewish philosopher Edmund Husserl, intentionality consists in the giving of something-itself, the seizing upon of something-itself as perception and recollection³. This giving can be determined from the modes of consciousness that are perceived and recollected. Furthermore, the concept of intentionality and the concept of evidence are correlative⁴. Therefore,  the essence of the intentionality associated with "axis of evil" can be extracted from the empirically measured global consciousness of "evil" itself. The Macroknow Intellectual Intelligence (MI2) system measures people's global awareness and attention, including the attention people focus on desires, aversions (including "evil"), and powers (that advance or frustrate desires). When correlated with world events, the daily MI2 measurements quantify people's judgments worldwide.

In the State of the Union, "axis of evil" points back to 9/11 as its primal antecedent event. This overt reference-back to the evil of terrorism  is only one of a multiplicity of possible references. For example, an examination of MI2 historical data for the time period from 1-Apr-01 through 11-Sep-01 provides references back to three related global events, all of them implicating evil on a massive scale: (1) the massive protests against the FTAA Summit in Quebec City, Canada (18- to 22-Apr-01); (2) the massive protests against the EU Summit in Gothenburg, Sweden (14- to 16-Jun-01); and (3) the massive protests against the G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy (15- to 22-Jul-01).

The graphical evidence presented in this essay (consisting of single, joint, and conditional empirical probability charts depicting both awareness and attention) shows with clarity that these protests had much to do with two kinds of evil: (1) the evil of globalization and (2) the evil of the "rule of law." The charts imply unequivocally that people worldwide opposed "globalization" and did not trust the "rule of law." For millions of protesters around the globe, the "rule of law" provides, by design, net advantages to "upper dogs" at the expense of "under dogs"⁵; for them, the globalization of such net advantages would be a monstrous calamity.

The essential structure of neocon intentionality should now be clear:

1. The World Crisis of Debt-Based Capitalism. The push for globalization by the G8 triggered massive protests – and a world crisis. This crisis could be a formidable threat to debt-based Capitalism. The magnitude of the crisis can be quantified: the total outstanding debt of the U.S. (financial and nonfinancial sectors included) was about 29.3 trillion at yearend 2001; it ballooned to more than 44.5 trillion at yearend 2006⁶. People's consciousness before 9/11 was too focused on "evil," and "evil" pointed back to "globalization" and to the "rule of law" (see the High Awareness/High Attention charts). Neocon strategy had to reorient global consciousness away from "globalization" and the "rule of law."
    

2. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). A new danger had to be created and thematized – a new manipulable threat that could never point back to the "rule of law" in the same way; and would keep the masses in a constant state of fear. What new danger did the neocons concoct? Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), that's what. With WMDs, people could be seized upon with constant mortal fear anywhere anytime.
    
3. U.S. Power Serving Israel's interests. Many neocons are pro Zionists⁷. An exegesis of a Zionist conspiracy would go like this. Both Iraq and Iran are foes of Israel; therefore, they could be used as scapegoats. More specifically, they could be accused of possessing or developing WMDs – then punished for the sins, inequities, and transgressions of Israel. A U.S. attack directed at Iraq, for example, could help Israel in a multiplicity of ways. Here are three: (1) Iraq's wealth could be plundered; (2) Islamic countries could be destabilized and weakened for decades; and, ironically, (3) attention could be diverted away from the fact that Israel possesses between 100 and 200 nuclear weapons⁸ (WMDs and the rockets to deliver them to Moscow, Berlin, and Tehran). A U.S. attack on Iraq or Iran would mark the triumph of Azazel, the demon of Jewish mythology^9-10.
    
4. Oil. Finally, why would the neocon strategy include North Korea in the "axis of evil"? What does North Korea have to do with Iraq or Iran? Simple. The inclusion of North Korea points indirectly back to yet another danger – the "yellow peril," or is it "yellow terror."¹¹ The intentionality of the invasion of Iraq or Iran would be to guarantee the United States a new instrument for controlling the flow of Middle East oil to China and India, two giants that would soon flex their military-industrial muscles.

Neocon strategy is bound to fail. For millions of people, neocon intentionality is nothing but pure malice.

Dr. Edward E. Ayoub
Toronto
April 12, 2007

¹ President Delivers State of the Union Address. The White House, 29-Jan-02. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html.

² See, for example, the following articles.

• Taki Theodoracopulos. The Bum Frum. The American Conservative, 21-Apr-03. http://www.amconmag.com/04_21_03/taki.html. See also David Frum’s Web site, http://www.davidfrum.com.
• Timothy Noah. David Frum's "Axis of Evil." Authorial vanity strikes the Bush White House. Slate, 5-Feb-02. http://slate.msn.com/id/2061695.

³ Edmund Husserl. Formal and Transcendental Logic. Translated by Dorian Cairns. The Hague, Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff, 1969, at 157-159.

⁴ Ibid., at 160.

⁶ Z.1 Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States, 8-Mar-07. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. [D3. Debt Outstanding by Sector.] http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1r-2.pdf.

⁷ Patrick J. Buchanan, former presidential candidate, wrote in The American Conservative: "We charge that a cabal of polemicists and public officials seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests. We charge them with colluding with Israel to ignite those wars . . . What these neoconservatives seek is to conscript American blood to make the world safe for Israel." See Patrick J. Buchanan. Whose War? A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest. The American Conservative, 24-Mar-03. http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html. See also The American Cause, http://www.theamericancause.org/; and Neoconservatism, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoconservatism.

⁸ S. Aftergood and H. M. Kristensen. Nuclear Weapons - Israel. Federation of American Scientists (FAS), 8-Jan-07. http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/.

⁹ Atonement ritual. Leviticus 16:8, 10, 26.

¹⁰ Azazel. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azazel.

¹¹ See Yellow Peril. Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_peril.