No End to War
This is:
The facade of Civilisation cultivating itself through War, charade of morality in the name of material interest, abstract conquest (security, energy and monetary wealth rather than territory and institutions, as such), Christian piety congealing in the stale air of unprecedented power, in enormous white buildings, and lacquered wood and leather offices with views across continents: this is
a parade of promises disrupted by lies so blatant and obvious and insulting that you wish they hadn’t even bothered, and you have more respect for the worst Pentagon strategists (Rumsfeld, Wolfowtiz, the military chiefs) than the best Whitehouse diplomats and appeasers (Powell, Rice) because you can trust these blunt, dead-eyed bastards more than the oily politico sharks whose concern it is to disguise and obscure the naked and distinct workings of power for the further advantage of this very power (and its tentacles, reaching into the everyday, the psychological, the fiscal, the cultural…all forms of capital, all types of investment, financial and libidinal…). You get me: if Iraq had been all about oil (which it wasn’t; this was just a nice chaser) then that would have had a certain Imperial rationality: nowhere on earth actually needs oil more than America and Europe, naked material ambition is not without precedent, obviously they could fight for that advantage, and – historically – what potential Empire wouldn’t? (And America is getting less and less afraid of that word.) It’s the lies, the weak excuses, the fuzzy logic, the shameless attempt to exploit fear and racial division (which is exactly what is being exploited even as lip-service is paid to the “friendly Muslims in our midst” and all that crap: this is racism on a molar scale, identity politics with all subtlety blown out/up on a global geo-political stage) that really shows a lack of respect for the world, the enemy, and – fatally – the people this War Against Terror is fought for (i.e. us). This is
a lie as well: The War Against Terror isn’t fought for people, but for large aggregates of power, financial blocs, market dynamics, technological innovation, psychological conquest, the ideological crusade (Christian Democracy as Global System of Accumulation and Exploitation, the Cloak of Liberty, a fog of freedom…it’s not fascism, and I’d choose it over an Islamic State any day, and I’m guessing you would too, but don’t be fooled by the words of Democracy, its silver tongue, the techniques and the tricks are all the same, power uses the same stock strategies of control and domination whatever form it takes – the one fatal characteristic of any State, its secret desire, its fundamental concern, is the determination to maintain itself, to hoard power, to keep it indefinitely).
No end to war: Civilisation cultivates War:
And the American way, always, of Regime Change (through direct intervention or clandestine support for the counterrevolutionary opposition) – the most secretive and scrappy path to World Domination in history – and this almost somnolent, stupid obsession with one regime at a time that’s a bit like a calm psychopathology that finally, inevitably, leads into barbaric violence (particularly true of Vietnam).
Technology cultivates War: the American Military-Industrial Complex promotes war, the Idea and the Means (and the delivery, the nature, the tactical concepts, and, later on, street tech-ware) and a technological sublime that had to perfect itself once the Manhattan Project proved a step too far – can’t go forwards, bigger, more destructive, so go sideways, smaller, smarter, more deadly. Less destructive, more lethal…wars of (war is) technosupremacy, the ultimate fetishist object of otherwise abstract power.
Ideology cultivates War…not just religion, but other ideals, i.e. order. Wasn’t Rumsfeld sizing up and preparing for this the moment he re-entered the Pentagon and stood up to all the military chiefs? The vicious, grey-faced, blunt-edged civil servant organising death and destruction in terms of statistics, logistics and tactics – for whom this pure form of war is a step on each time, another move and then a new game, a continual process of organisation until everything is finally organised out of EXISTENCE
No end to war, or…