Site Presented By
Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
That Hedges would see war through the brutal lens of the particularly vicious conflicts he has covered -- wars that give war a bad name -- is not surprising. But perhaps as a result of his own experiences, Hedges seems not to have fully grasped the implications of our new age of what Michael Ignatieff calls "virtual war" -- war that involves little or no risk, because one side enjoys total technological superiority. Such a war, as Ignatieff points out, becomes a spectacle, and one that does not even fully engage the passions of the citizens who are observing it. Kosovo was the paradigmatic example of a virtual war: NATO fought it not for national survival (only wars for survival, Ignatieff says, turn into "wars between peoples, with the mutual demonization which follows") but for principle, and the allied side lost not a single combat casualty. Not surprisingly, it was barely perceived by the public as being a war at all.
So far the "war on terror," whatever it is, bears much more resemblance to the virtual Kosovo war, the mostly virtual war in Afghanistan, or the semi-virtual Gulf War in which the U.S. took only a few dozen casualties while killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, than it does to real wars like Vietnam or World War II. Because America's actual survival is not threatened, because the enemy we are fighting is invisible and stateless, because our armed forces are volunteers and because we are assured of victory in any orthodox military confrontation, the "war on terror" is not really a war at all. This has made it much easier to sell to the American people (although the Iraq war, if it comes, will be seen as being potentially an actual war and so may not be quite so easy to sell), but it also means that it is not something that we are deeply emotionally engaged with.
This throws something of a monkey wrench into at least part of Hedges' thesis. There are two reasons that Hedges does not want us to embrace war too easily: because of what we will do to those we target, and because of what we will do to ourselves. The current situation bears out the first fear, but not the second -- at least not in the way that Hedges thinks.
In "Virtual War," Ignatieff raises the disturbing possibility that America's absolute military superiority might lead us to an unrestrained use of force. "Fortunately -- at least for those who advocate caution in the use of military force -- modern democratic elites are increasingly reluctant to go to war," he writes. "Precision violence is now at the disposal of a risk-averse culture, unconvinced by the language of military sacrifice, skeptical about the costs of foreign adventures and determined to keep out of harm's way." And this aversion to risk is coupled with a national policy that denies that we have the right to do what we want just because we can. Ignatieff notes that "we do [not] believe ourselves to be entitled to use military power to change a regime by force. So our tanks did not go to Baghdad and our forces did not enter Belgrade."
"Virtual War" was written in 2000. What a difference two years and a terror attack make. Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz are now in charge and 3,000 Americans lie dead. America's leaders now do believe themselves to be entitled to change a regime by force, and they stand ready to do just that. And Congress -- sort of -- agrees with them.
The situation we now find ourselves in seems to be Hedges' (and Ignatieff's) worst nightmare: The nation is being herded docilely toward war. But where the situation differs from Hedges' fears is that there is no drug. No one is high on the war on terror. There is some free-floating anxiety and anger -- emotions exquisitely played upon by Bush and his team, who used them in combination with their brilliant Iraq gambit (all the benefits of war, none of the cost) to ensure they gained political control in the recent elections. But that's about it. Despite the best efforts of patriotism-peddling Fox News, after the initial shock of the attack nickel bags of aggression, nationalism, purity, resentment and self-righteousness have not found that many buyers on the streets of America.
Hedges would surely welcome this development, if he thought it was true. Yet as Ignatieff warns us, in some ways, the public's increasing distance from wars that are carried out in its name is a disturbing development. The bloodstained Serb militiaman performing ethnic cleansing, the Kosovo Liberation Army killer exacting his revenge, and the chanting tribes behind them, are not pretty to look at. But the American citizen watching half-interestedly from his couch as a high-tech pilot and three technicians pushing buttons on computers pulverize 1,000 invisible enemies may not be a giant leap up on the moral scale. The raw passions Hedges decries may be primal, they may tend toward fascism, but at least they bespeak a genuine awareness that war exists.
Hedges fears that the American people are more like the chanting tribal hordes and less like the virtual couch potato. It isn't yet clear whether he's right. The truth will not be known until the chips are down in Iraq, and if there is an invasion the American public may well prove to be some spectacularly banal combination of the two -- a nation of half-awake fascists. But if in the end the American people maintain a relatively cool, detached temperament, and America's leaders in the "war on terror" follow their example, one would have to agree with Hedges that that is a good thing. Outrage is an honorable and understandable emotion after one has been dealt a savage blow, but as every boxer knows, it takes a cool head to win. Storming angrily in throwing wild roundhouses is a good way to end up flat on your back and unconscious. The fact is, the war against terror is and should be a cold, not a hot, one.
Which is why it's past time to stop beating the dead horse of those leftists -- whose total number is probably in the thousands -- who did not express sufficient outrage after the Sept. 11 attacks. Yes, the immediate leap to a coldblooded geopolitical analysis betrays a lack of compassion and human empathy for the victims, and a reflexive dogmatism. Hedges would have done better to have acknowledged this, and to have acknowledged that the outpouring of patriotism that followed Sept. 11 was both understandable and in large part a positive thing. But Hedges' main point is incontrovertible. The state of reified and permanent outrage that conservative pundits define as the watermark of a "real American," and that the Bush administration has whipped up for its various purposes, represents a far greater danger to the nation than the lack of fellow-feeling evinced by a handful of leftists (most of whom supported some self-defensive action by the U.S. in any case).
As Gen. Wesley Clark, the former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe -- no poster child for the traitorous elites on the coasts -- wrote in his blurb on the back of Hedges' book, "Hedges provides a somber and timely warning to those -- in any society -- who would evoke the emotions of war for the pursuit of political gain."
As the "war on terror" continues on its apparently endless and potentially catastrophic course, America would do well to heed Hedges' and Clark's warning.
