<The Arab boycott of American products won’t do much economic harm. But it is a powerful symbol of new grass-roots activism in the Middle East.

Sort of like when a stranded whale gets a name, once people get involved in a boycott differences can increase by a couple of orders of magnitude. Folks feel empowered and invested in the process. It is no longer just something the big fish are doing. They feel they have a part in it all.

It gets much harder to disengage. Instead of doing it by fiat, there has to be a PR process with the population.

I don’t think the Bush Administration can disengage, can avoid the fight. The Bush Doctrine, “you’re either for us or against us”, will create enemies anywhere, and everywhere. For instance, I didn’t vote for him. Does that make me “against” him, or my country, or my fellow citizens. According to GWB it could.

Technically, it’s supposed to be “for us or against us on terrorism”, but that can include anything, or everything.

Under the Bush Doctrine, any action the US doesn’t like places any entity on the other side. There can be 100 items “for” us, but the 1 will outweigh that.

So, I have to agree with some of the folks here. I think we will go to some sort of “war” with all Muslims. It may only be economic, but it will be a form of “war”.

And it will hurt. It seems reasonable that energy prices will skyrocket, and the standard of living in the US lowered. Saddam will be OK. It would be hard to mount any ground operations in an area where the population was against us.

Any thought that this “war” can be won is hopelessly naïve. China might come out OK. At a minimum, energy costs will skyrocket, which might have the advantage of folks getting realistic about nuclear energy.

All over some Israeli settlements which everyone knows are illegal.

Arf