THIS IS WHAT HE SAID
Deterrence and neutrality are not quite the same things as aggressive war though, wouldn't you agree? In the first case if war breaks out this is considered to be a failure of deterrence, not a success. In the second case, one is committed to fighting only in self defence. How do either of these cases suddenly make war a good thing? Both policies are actually predicated on the idea that war is a very bad thing that should be avoided- and these are two powerful means of attempting to doing so. Does Switzerland have to fight a war every few years or so to prove it means business? Then why on earth does America?
It is frightening to see how much progress the warmongers have made in my own short life in apparently convincing the majority of Americans and Canadians that war is really not such a big deal at all- and sometimes even a positive and entertaining thing. With the vast sociological and psychological expertise in the 'black arts' that has been assiduously built up during the cold war, combined with a tightly held and disciplined media, it seems they now have the ability to play people like so many piano keys. It is really amazing to have watched this switch from 'evil Osama' to 'liberating women' to 'evil Saddam' and 'WMD' to once again 'liberation', with barely a hiccup along the way in such a startlingly short period of time
Indeed, it reminds me of the episode in 1984 where the speaker changes the name of the enemy in midspeech and no one notices the difference. be too much to swallow. I mean if you can swallow that Afghanistan is now actually ‘liberated’, for example, or that the global ‘anti-Americanism’ is motivated by jealousy and hatred of freedom, what lie is too big to swallow? Most North Americans (and I most definitely am including Canadians- including myself! ) are conditioned by the medium of television and thus to an anoetic, episodic way of knowing. It is thus simple to manipulate images and sounds to distort reality into its polar opposite. So for example, war, which mostly involves ripping human beings into disgusting bits and pieces (picture a slaughter house where they use chainsaws), is presented as a clean experience where there are no bodies to be seen at all. And with war cleaned up, it becomes an exciting and even mostly harmless activity.
There has been a concerted effort to make Americans forget what they had learned rather painfully in the two Big Wars and Korea and especially in Vietnam - that war is a serious, nasty, messy business that therefore must be entered into only as a last resort. War has instead become an action movie. This new improved image of war has been carefully built up with the scripted and tightly image controlled trial balloon of Grenada down to the latest cinematic triumph, Iraq II . And now we anxiously await the sequel, is it going to be set in Asia, in the Middle East again? Maybe a surprise like Cuba? You didn’t like Iraq II? Too many plot twists? Well just you wait for the next one!
And so those that profit from war regardless of how it turns out, those that wait to pick over the carcass, those that seek greater social control at home, and those that merely use war as a distraction while they pick your pocket, will continue to prosper. Unlike the old days, they do not even need to really convince or motivate people very much. Acquiescence is all they are aiming for and in that they have succeeded.