Slogan For Conflict?

Here is the embarrassing question: Is America actually at war? We have a war president, war hawks, war planes, war correspondents, war cries, even war crimes – but do we have war? We have war dead, but the question remains. With young US soldiers being blown up almost daily, it can seem an absurd question, an offensive one. With thousands of Iraqis killed by American firepower, it can seem a heartless question....There can be no question that Iraq is in a state of war....

But, regarding the Iraq conflict as it involves the United States, something essential is lacking that would make it a war – and that is an enemy.

The so-called “insurgents,” are not America’s enemy. Americans who bother to imagine the situation from the Iraqi point of view – a massive foreign invasion, a brutal occupation, the heartbreaking deaths of brothers, cousins, children, parents – naturally understand that an “insurgency” is the appropriate response. Its goal is simply to force the invaders and occupiers to leave.

Bush would say Iraq is only one front in the so-called war on terrorism. Surely, in that realm, where the antagonist has a name and a face, the US is authentically at war. If Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda are not an enemy, what is? But the war on terrorism is not real war either, since the Pentagon has proven itself incapable of actually engaging Al Qaeda. That, of course, is because Al Qaeda is a free floating nihilism, not a nation, or even a network. Bin Laden was a self-mythologized figure of no historic standing until George W. Bush designated him America’s equal by defining 9/11 as an act of war, instead of a crime to be met with criminal justice.

But this over-reaction, turned into the war for which the other party simply did not show up. Which is, of course, why we are blasting a substitute Iraq to smithereens.
Posted on The Human Stain