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1.
bush's comments on his "war on terror"--whatever that means--seem a rare slip from script that opened onto a space of near honesty....of course this is not a "war" in any conventional sense..."winning" seems just a word that functions to give an illusion of direction to an otherwise absurd undertaking---the notion of "terror" is so problematic as to mean almost nothing--it designates the enemy of the day---the term has been discussed extensively elsewhere and so there is no point in repeating...
it is not surprising to read on the front page of todays ny times attempts to retract and/or spin away bush's remarks. "we cannot win in the sense of being able to win and well what matters is that we are resolute no matter how absurd the situation--what really matters is being resolute, not wavering..." fine tactic to deal with absurdity.
fact is that this administration loves the "war on terror"--it needs the "war on terror". its ideological precursors are obvious: many in the past century relied on permanent quasi military mobilization--this enabled a "unification" of the "Nation" around a Leader who resolutely faces a phantom but ubiquitous enemy. this war on an enemy that is everywhere and nowhere gave the Nation a Mission, a Historical Purpose-- this is the lingua franca of bush and other very military radical nationalist Leader--this administration has relied on this "war" to legitimate itself---all the better for it and for those who support it that the war be eternal, winning be a constant illusion but never a possibility, that the enemy be undefinable so it can be constantly redefined.
what matters is that the "war on terror" has its flip in a constant flirtation with a state of emergenecy. radical nationalists love that. whether they admit it or not in the public sphere, when in power, the state of emergency is a double of a discovery of a "national essence"--always military, always narrow-minded, always murderous.
2.
the war in iraq has no connection to any "war on terror"---none---the only surprise this thread held for me was to find this association continuing to function at any level, for anyone.
actually, there was another surprise--that this false, ridiculous linkage would operate in some cases above to support barbaric calls for increased civilian casualties in iraq, together with a pseudo-justification for them.
if you look at this set of arguments from a viewpoint not convinced in any way by the various associations that support them, what you see is a kind of bizarre bloodlust being articulated by what i take to be far-right johnwaynes more than happy to fantasize about the deaths of any number of civilians, so long as (in this case) they are brown people who are far away. i do not see any distinction between these positions and those of the groups who take an execute hostages, except that the americans who make them try to wrap themselves in the flag and fret about "our troops" to justify them.
it is pretty repellent stuff.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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