tripping point

miggidy writes:
"You use the _expression “tipping point” in one of your blogmails. Isn’t this the essential premise of the neo-con argument?

And looking at: S. Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, (Iraq), don’t we have to at least pause and consider a stunning, scary, personally embarrassing, possibility?"

thnx - i love getting feedback/input :-)

i figured the questions/answers might be of interest to all - so ill respond here

miggidy was referring to my post here http://wotisitgood4.blogspot.com/2005/03/hella-kafka.html - where i suggested that if sgrena had been successfully executed, it maybe maybe perhaps have resulted in a 'tipping point' in turning public opinion violently against the war to the point that it became unsustainable. my logic was that the story would have included the perfect of confluence of a) everyone's favourite story of the video'd kidnappee pleading for her life b) the successful rescue c) the murder of a journalist (which journalists might care about) d)the shame of wingnut bloggers wrt eason jordan. to clarify, i certainly wasnt predicting that it would have signalled the beginning of the end - rather that the story merely had the potential to - and we havent seen anything else which gets even close to that.

the narrative would have been really delightful - a high profile, personal story which demonstrates the moral bankruptcy of the entire adventure, and could conceivably shine a bright light on the fact that actually 'we' really *are not* better than 'them'. the insurgents were sufficiently kind to free the poor journalist, and then we murdered her because she had the potential to tell people how nasty we are, and tell of war crimes, and god knows what else.

itll be interesting what happens next - we may indeed have a tipping point - if she tells of the warcrimes, and convincingly makes the case that it was an assassination attempt, then maybe she is worth more alive than dead.

now - its true that the neocons liberally use the notion of 'tipping points', however they use it in a prescriptive sense, whereas my use was descriptive - so its completely different. the neocon 'logic' is that if we do a whole bunch of things, then eventually we'll get to the peak and itll be all downhill hence (did sysiphus ever find the tipping point?) - im simply saying that hopefully one day, something will happen that results in an end to the nightmare, which we can retrospectively identify...

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now to your 2nd point: "And looking at: S. Arabia, Lebanon, Egypt, (Iraq), don’t we have to at least pause and consider a stunning, scary, personally embarrassing, possibility?"

it seems that what you are actually asking is: 'could it be that the neocons were right, and that maybe it really was worth it?'

its a good question, glad you asked, the answer is long, but its probably a good excuse to do an overview :-)

ill post this answer to the first question now cos its kind of timely - and part2 will come later... stay tuned!