|
July 25, 2009
David Bromwich in America's Wars at Tom Dispatch argues that war has become the normal state of things rather than an aberration. The language is one threats, wars, conflicts, decades, tomorrows wars.
A new-modeled usage has been brought into English to ease the change of view. In the language of think-tank papers and journalistic profiles over the past two years, one finds a strange conceit beginning to be presented as matter-of-fact: namely the plausibility of the U.S. mapping with forethought a string of wars.....weird prospect that this usage -- "tomorrow's wars" -- renders routine is that we anticipate a good many wars in the near future. We are the ascendant democracy, the exceptional nation in the world of nations. To fight wars is our destiny and our duty. Thus the word "wars" -- increasingly in the plural -- is becoming the common way we identify not just the wars we are fighting now but all the wars we expect to fight.
The language embodies a policy altogether opposed to an idealism of liberty that persisted from the founding of the U.S. far into the twentieth century. Bromwich adds that:
The future wars of choice for the Defense Department appear to be wars of heavy bombing and light-to-medium occupation. The weapons will be drones in the sky and the soldiers will be, as far as possible, special forces operatives charged with executing "black ops" from village to village and tribe to tribe. It seems improbable that such wars -- which will require free passage over sovereign states for the Army, Marines, and Air Force, and the suppression of native resistance to occupation -- can long be pursued without de facto reliance on regime change. Only a puppet government can be thoroughly trusted to act against its own people in support of a foreign power.
A sentiment of public disgust with the very idea of war is no longer the norm in the empire, despite the fact that the U.S. military situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.
|
since war has become the normal state of things rather than aberration, how can man escape the idea that presupposes his "aberration"?