ECO-TERROR
Back to Baudrillard: According to Baudrillard, when the logic of war is missing - when there is no real reason for the war to exist - you get a virtual war. War becomes a spectacle of force managed by the dominant side. The 1991 Gulf War was waged with high-precision weaponry and 'surgical strikes'. The war was less a conflict between adversaries than a demonstration of American power. [...]
In the current war, there has always been a sense that we are about to reach a climax, that hostilities are about to start for real, but this is always indefinitely postponed. The 'big battle' was promised first of all when American troops began the march up to Baghdad, then when they began to take the airport, then when they began their assault on the city…now it is promised when coalition forces chase Saddam's henchmen up to his homeland in northern Iraq.
Now, we are faced with the question of what victory is supposed to look like - how will we know when the war is over? Saddam is not around to surrender, minor skirmishes are likely to continue for many months.
Ultimately, it is down to Bush to draw his line in the sand, and declare the Second Gulf War closed.
[Obrigado, Carlos]
Power trips: Coalition forces did storm Baghdad over the weekend - first its suburbs, and in later incursions the city centre. But they seemed less interested in 'taking the city' than in demonstrating their ability to take it. In this war of image over substance, even the weekend's incursions into the Iraqi capital appeared to be about displaying American power rather than actually asserting it.