Page 2 of 2 SPEAKING
FREELY US public shrinks from war's
reality By K Darbandi
cleaning ladies to take care of the
mess - just as the German, Polish, South Korean
and other forces are cleaning up Afghanistan.
The US public currently opposed to Bush's
policies in Iraq were not initially against going
to war, and they are not now really in support of
abandoning the "mission" and the devastated
Iraqis. The truth is that the "involvement" in
Iraq is not culturally
digestible anymore: it has
become too alien to watch.
The war used to
resemble video games: buildings or tiny figures on
the screen blown away in a cloud of dust. It used
to be sanitized. Now it is a bit too messy: the
tortures, civilian deaths - the clean-cut look is
not there anymore. What happened to the smart
bombs, Rumsfeld?
The US military has spent
billions of dollars since the Vietnam War to
repackage foreign wars and bring a whole new look
to the sensory internalization of its global
crimes in the US public's eye. The US public is
now used to this clean packaging and becomes very
uncomfortable when wars are presented any other
way. The US military has succeeded in packaging
its war-presentation strategy so well that the
public does not even have the stomach to tolerate
the real thing anymore. Pentagon strategists over
the years have indeed become the victims of their
own success.
So too many young soldiers
are now coming home without limbs or faces, and
they have totally ruined the Superman image all
were expecting. The war has caused a cultural
crisis in the US.
The idea was to bring
down the number of casualties, but the Pentagon
and its huge medical establishment were so busy
saving wounded lives that they totally forgot that
what they have saved are basically human remains
with a heartbeat; the mutilated, faceless and
brain-damaged young men and women of the volunteer
armed forces. The number of these victims is
growing daily, and the financial, social and
medical infrastructure to support their tattered
existences has yet to be constructed.
Cultural identity is dear to all, but the
pocketbook is a completely different matter. The
US public has realized that this war is costing
them too much and might, just might, ruin their
plans for the next vacation to Disney World.
Taking away our fairytale image is one thing, but
you can't rob us of our fairyland! Hardship is for
losers, and Americans are winners, especially when
it comes to their fun time! People did not turn
against the Iraq occupation because of the crimes
against the Iraqis, or the complete disconnection
of September 11 from Saddam Hussein. But they did
partly depart from supporting it after all the
implicit economic rewards turned into a financial
nightmare.
At this juncture, the cultural
crisis is compounded with the financial fiasco,
one that the public knows it has to pay for sooner
or later. The public is desperately awaiting a
solution to this quagmire. The progressive
intellectuals propose solutions; the Democrats
have several solutions, but so does President
Bush. Frighteningly, his might be the most
compatible.
Give me back my culture Well then, Bush says, let's reflect calmly on
the true reasons for this fiasco. There must be
something in the picture now that was not there
when we went to save the Iraqis from Saddam. Uh,
of course, it is the hostage-taking,
terrorist-breeding, girl-stoning, Jew-hating
Iranians! They are the real cause for the havoc in
Iraq. Bush says: "I can fix it for you all; I will
restore your Superman, fix your video games and
arrange your trip to Disney World. Just let me get
these hairy, dark bastards, and I will get you to
your blond Cinderella in time for the 9 o'clock
fireworks extravaganza!"
Says Bush: "Hear
me out, folks! I have the cruise ships ready in
the Persian Gulf. We'll go in fast and swift,
mostly from the air and the sea; from that
altitude you won't even see blood; I promise it
will be clean, like the games. Then we occupy the
southern oilfields, and I will bring all the money
back with cheap Iranian oil, and Iraq will be ours
again to manage ... how's that?" Go get 'em,
tiger! Fox News and 300 What Fox
News does in the current US political and cultural
context is quite similar to what the movie
300 did by making the public feel good
about itself by inviting them to attack and
destroy a sub-human race. A "few good men" will
annihilate the incompetent, savage and inhuman
enemy in a very one-sided event.
A large
number of people who watch Fox actually do not
care about the truth, they want to hear a sort of
affirmation ritual to feel better; but as the
war-junkies that they are, they won't rest until
they get their war. In this context, 300 is
part of the war plan: to de-humanize the Persians,
who are depicted in the picture as all the colored
and sexually ambiguous people on this Earth. The
neurotically selfish culture will reaffirm its
racial superiority once again while we all wait
for the anti-war sentiments to grow in the US
public.
We need to understand better why
people turn against wars. The US public, by and
large, is composed of a very anti-intellectual
culture and, with the current popular cultural
traits, it will never turn against wars for the
reasons that progressive intellectuals do. The
link is missing, and has been missing for decades
between us and the social body. The prime reasons
lie in the public's current cultural traits and
our failure to understand the public fully and all
the good and evil that it carries with it, like
all other people in other societies. [1]
More wars will come and go, but where we
can start, in my opinion, is by smashing the
Democrats' hold on the left wing in the US.
Everything else will follow from that.
Note 1. Many Iranian
intellectuals, under threat of war, have
defensively drawn on the historical glories of the
"Persian" civilization, attempting to purify the
image of a very troubled society as they
contemplate a possible invasion, vast bombing and
war. Instead, they should focus on simple current
facts, such as the vast crowds that still come to
squares to watch public executions in the Islamic
Republic. These and other dark voluntary acts by
at least large segments of the Iranian public are
part and parcel of what still keeps the Islamic
Republic of Iran in power. Glorifying the public
seems to be a universal disease of the progressive
intellectual.
K Darbandi is an
independent Iranian-American scientist and a
former member of the Islamic Republic opposition.
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