Sunday, March 27, 2011

Review of The American Way of War

First published at SocialistWorker.org on January 11, 2011.

Last week the Obama administration ordered over a thousand more Marines to Afghanistan to “solidify progress” being made in the Kandahar campaign. Last year Obama sent more troops because the war wasn’t going well. This year it’s because the war is going well.

Tom Engelhardt, creator of the TomDispatch website, has been following this trend for years. Before Obama’s first troop surge in 2009, government officials had an unusually public discussion about whether to send more soldiers or to increase the training of Afghan army. In the introduction to his excellent The American Way of War, Engelhardt comments on the inevitability of the outcome"

"The essence of this “debate” came down to: More of them versus more of us (and keep in mind that more of “them”…. actually meant more of “us” in the form of extra trainers and advisers.) In other words, however contentious the disputes in Washington, however dismally the public viewed the war….the only choices were between more and more."

This September will mark the tenth year since the September 11 attacks launched the U.S. government and society into a permanent state of war. The initial years of this era saw major protests against the invasions of Afghanistan and, especially Iraq. Today, although the Afghanistan War is less popular than ever, there is little public opposition. Most Americans seem to have resigned themselves to its inevitability.

One reason the prospect of “bringing the troops home” seems more remote than ever is the growing realization that the problem is not one mistaken war or dimwitted president but something more deeply rooted. Engelhardt doesn’t use the term ‘imperialism’, but he perfectly captures what it looks like in the U.S. today:

"Because the United States does not look like a militarized county, it’s hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere (usually, in fact, many places) at any moment."

Anyone who wants to rebuild an anti-war movement that understands this imperial reality should read The American Way of War. Engerhardt explores the profound changes that have taken place since the launching of the Global War on Terror. His aim is not so much to explain why these changes have taken place as to understand their effects on American society.

Reading this book feels like poking around with a flashlight in the unexamined corners of the post-9/11 American imperial mindset. Each chapter poses questions that many readers will wonder whey they never bothered to ask: Why do reporters “embed” with ground troops but not with Air Force units, the strategic heart of every American war of the last fifty years? What will the world look like when aerial drones proliterate and the Pentagon’s precedent of cross-border aerial assassinations becomes the international norm? How can politicians and pundits claim we are teaching good government around the world even as they declare that our own in Washington is broken?

A skilled writer, Engelhardt is especially drawn to the ways the changing shape of American imperialism is reflected in its language:

"If war is now our permanent situation, it has also been sundered from a set of words that once accompanied it. It lacks, for instance, “victory.” …[which] no longer seems to matter. War American-style is now conceptually unending, as are preparations for it."

He makes a chilling comparison to the official language in George Orwell’s 1984 - “we live in a world of American Newspeak in which alternatives to a state of war are not only ever more unacceptable, but ever harder to imagine.” At the same time, he understands that the rulers of American society are vulnerable because they are often fooled by their own propaganda. Imperial hubris can blind American leaders to some basic facts of life outside the Green Zones.

"[The CIA reported the death of] Abu Layth al-Libi, whom U.S. officials described as ‘a rising star’ in the group.” “Rising star” is such an American phrase, melding as it does imagined terror hierarchies with the lingo of celebrity tabloids. In fact, one problem with Empire-speak, and imperial thought more generally, is the way it prevents imperial officials from imagining a world not in their own image. So it’s not surprising that, despite their best efforts, they regularly conjure up their enemies as a warped version of themselves – hierarchical, overly reliant on leaders, and top heavy.

What is hard for Washington to grasp is this: “Decapitation,” to use another American imperial term, is not a particularly effective strategy with a decentralized guerrilla or terror organization. The fact is a headless guerilla movement is nowhere near as brainless or helpless as a headless Washington would be.”

This sharp wit runs throughout the book. The section about the lack of media coverage of air campaigns, for example, is wonderfully titled “On Not Looking Up.” Not only does this humor make The American Way of War a surprisingly entertaining read given the subject matter, it reminds us of something all great anti-war movements have known: the war machine is not just evil; it’s often absurd.

Absurdity is the theme of the Joseph Heller’s classic anti-war novel Catch-22, a dizzying ride through the twisted logic of the Air Force in World War II. The book’s title, for example, refers to a rule that airmen can be declared insane from the stress of fighting and sent home but that anyone who asks to be sent home is clearly sane and therefore must continue flying.

It’s hard not to think of Catch-22 when reading accounts from Afghanistan like this one from the New York Times.

“Please don’t walk on my fields, they are newly sown,” a farmer, waving a packet of seeds, called to the soldiers as they patrolled.
“Hajji, you know the deal,” an American sergeant answered. “The Taliban put mines on the paths, so we have to walk in the fields.”

The farmer’s concern presented a quandary for the soldiers, who would like to keep villagers on their side. “I think the farmers are laying the I.E.D.’s because we are walking through their fields,” said Sgt. Michael Ricchiuti. “They get paid to do it.”

The reporter, Carlotta Gall, doesn’t seem to notice the circular logic of soldiers walking in fields to avoid mines planted by farmers because the soldiers walk in their fields. Or at least she doesn’t comment on it. All in all, a pretty apt metaphor for a pointless war whose very pointlessness has become a nonstory.

Of course, there is a point to the occupation of Afghanistan, a country located near both the world’s greatest concentration of natural gas and the United States’ main future rivals China and India. Likewise, Engelhardt is clear that for all its madness, the War on Terror has succeeded very well in obscuring this truth and many others in a cloud of fear"

"Opinion polls indicate that terrorism is no longer at the top of the American agenda of worries. Nonetheless, don’t for a second think that the subject isn’t lodged deep in national consciousness. When asked “How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of terrorism,” a striking 39 percent of Americans were either “very worried” or “somewhat worried,”….

People always wonder: What would the impact of a second 9/11-style attack be on this country? Seldom noticed, however, is that all the pinprick terror events blown up to apocalyptic proportions add up to a second, third, fourth, fifth 9/11 when it comes to American consciousness."

In other words, we face the opposite dilemma than the one faced by Yossarian of Catch-22. Yossarian is considered crazy because he’s upset that anti-aircraft gunners are trying to kill him and doesn’t care that this homicidal behavior can be explained by the context of war. Today, on the other hand, it’s proper to be upset that terrorists are trying to kill us but crazy to look at the context of wars that might explain why.

We’re not the ones who are crazy. But if we want to build an effective opposition to these endless wars, we can’t be afraid of being called crazy – or unpatriotic or soft on terrorism. Flag waving “support the troops”- style activism has been proven ineffective. It does nothing to puncture what Engelhardt calls the “almost religious glow of praise and veneration, what might once have been called ‘idolatry,’” in which the Pentagon has been embraced since 9/11.

The American Way of War shows what a different anti-war war movement could look like: one that clear-sightedly calls out the murderous nature of our war state and holds up in contrast the warmth and humor on the side of humanity.

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