Dial: I hope I'm not coming across as a complete cnut. A bit of a
pretentious dilettante / geek -- that's probably fair.
Now, on monads and black boxes, I agree that we needn't constantly qualify, and that we need to be able to "zoom out" to the aggregate or composite level. But we should also be careful with our isomorphism. "The possibility of metaphor is disappearing in every sphere," as dem man say. So perhaps it can help to be able to say "the military wants perpetual war". I don't doubt that you can say it. From one perspective Baudelaire is wholly mistaken. The possibility of metaphor is increasing, the potential returns to metaphor are increasing (he says...) -- however, this may not be helpful in the long run.
But I think that we probably agree here. The military is lots of machines plugged into lots of other machines, plugged into lots of other machines... and on and on.
Given that, it may be more fruitful to discuss Greenwald's article, or at least, the somewhat generic point that Greenwald is making. Let me then link to a couple of germane pieces. The first is "
The Cheney Fallacy", by Jack Goldsmith. (Goldsmith, a conservative legal scholar, worked for the Bush administration and battled with them over detention / torture laws). Goldsmith basically makes a similar argument to Greenwald, minus the histrionic tone and the evil empire angle. The second is a comment to a related post at Opinio Juris, a well respected liberal international law blog -- scroll down
this page to the first comment, by Charlie Martel.
OT, but: I'm a big fan of Latour, BTW. And Callon, and MacKenzie. I've actually just read
this, which is excellent, and am currently reading
this, which is also very interesting. That's your required sociology for the day. As you were, folks...