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September 08, 2006
Michael Vlahos in his The Long War: A self-defeating prophecy in Asia Times explores the narrative of war. He says that a war narrative provides an interlocking foundation of "truths" that people easily accept because they appear to be self-evident and undeniable. The current war narrative is one of the "long war", or "long, global war".
Rocco, Checkmate, 2006
Vlahos goes on to say that:
.... the "global war on terrorism" has had three distinct "stories". Or perhaps it would be better to say that the story of this war has been twice transformed. Its initial incarnation as a "war against terrorism" was a simple story of righteous retribution: kill the terrorists in their mountain lairs...The second began with US President George W Bush's declaration of an "axis of evil". This represented a metamorphosis from a "terrorist" enemy to the image of an evil league of enemy powers, and thus the entire significance of the war was elevated....It is the collapse of this enterprise that has birthed yet another story. This third incarnation is a tortured response to the debacle in Iraq, where messianic goals and millenarian promises went south. Thus the "Long War"..... "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."
So it has been five years since the jihad against Western civilisation was confronted by the long war on global terrorism. This war is now seen as "the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history", the subetext is a war of civilizations, and we are explicitly fighting "Islamo-fascists" and opposing everyone who supports or even sympathizes with Muslim resistance.
Of course, the other side has their war narrative as well. Here the United States is seen to be great evil and it becomes Islam's enemy, opposition becomes a resistance to US occupation and Iran is seen to be the only nation-state that stands up to US power.
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The essay by Vlahos is superb. Compare it to the toxic sludge in the Weekend Oz and again today -
Monday.