PANDEMONIUM MIDNIGHT
WAR TRIBUNE
No. 593
ENGLISH:
If Corporate
America and its criminal political elite is to be stopped (and
the criminal political elites elsewhere on the planet for that matter),
if the war, the slaughtering, the bribery, the atrocities,
the trampling upon international law, the exploitation, oppression, profitmaking and
the contempt for life, if this whole barbarism is to be stopped, you
have to stop the entire system that brings it about.
In the words
of Jo Wilding, reporting from Baghdad:
"This whole
system has to go. If we can think of ways to kill, in their homes, people
we can't even see, render non-existent whole buildings by remote control,
we must be able to imagine and bring into being a better way to
run our world, to conduct ourselves without these corporate controlled governments,
without any governments. They've failed us, whatever their ideology:
now it's time for the people." (28.03.03)
Jutta.
In a brief
news sequence on TV yesterday, the camera showed wounded Iraqi children
in a hospital. A young boy, when aware of being filmed, made the victory
sign with his small, fragile fingers.
The Iraqis are
winning the battle for hearts and minds on a world wide scale. The question
is: will human, humane hearts and minds worldwide win over the dehumanized
invadors and their bullets and bombs?!
Jutta.
ABOUT WAR AND THEORIES OF WAR
War, the Father of All Things
By Franz J. T. Lee
01/04/03
Everybody talks about war, some are in favour, some are against, others
develop perfect war theories, some invent new theories of war. Yet, who reveals
the very quintessence of war? Of the current war on Iraq?
Who tells us about the Belligerent, Bellicose
Labour Non-Relations: Economic Exploitation - Political Domination - Social
Discrimination - Global Militarization - Human Alienation? Let's briefly see
what the labour world, the erudite patrian scholars, understand by
their concept "War"!
Let us recall what we have been taught about war,
in the cradle, in the kindergarten, at school, at university, and in society
in general. Let's
look at some aspects concerning the official, political correctness
of war theories and theories of war.
We'll just give the following corner stones of
patriotic, patrian, belligerent ideology a fleeting scientific-philosophic
glance: the evolution of theories of war, the causes of war, biological, ethnological
psychological, social, liberal, socialist, fascist and nationalistic war
theories.
How do the common folk, the "man on the street",
the mob, the workers, the majority, see war? How do, according to official
"statistics", 70% of Americans see their "new war"? What definition of war
has been popularized among them ideologically? Brain-washed by the mass
media, millions see it as a skirmish, a vendetta, the fight against "terrorism",
a conflict among national or international political parties and groups,
whom they themselves generally have voted democratically into power.
These involve, inter alia, hostilities, demonstrations, protest marches,
suicide bombers, the mother of all bombs, shooting, killing, dying for the
patria, conspiracy and bombing of a considerable duration and magnitude.
Now, very simplified, how do our venerated, venerable
social scientists and sociologists academically see this bellicose issue?
In nuce, to the aforesaid, to this belligerent potpourri, they add the
following: recognizability, that is, bellicose legitimism or belligerent legitimacy,
ordained, institutionalized, authorized by the United Nations, by international
laws, by custom, tradition, culture, ethics and rules. For example, in medieval
religious times, like in the case of modern Neo- or Anti-Darwinism, the "crusades"
were designed by a Divine War Lord, by the Grand Designer.
Of course, not like in the cases of the current
"New Wars", of the omnipotent Behemoth, the USA, versus the Elf Iraq
or the Dwarf Afghanistan, in the past, in war, the fighting parties
had to be sufficiently equal in power, in military power, to render the outcome
uncertain for a while.
In other words, when "war" still had calibre and
category, the above were usually classified as pacification campaigns, military
expeditions against the natives, as exploration of the "New World", or even
as interventions and reprisals. And, internally, when the "natives" resisted
colonialism, they were called rebellions or insurrections, and, if they were
strong enough and protracted, then only the "British Crown", the "Mother
Countries", called them "colonial wars". Compared to all these, Bush's current
corporate "pre-emptive" "war", his "full spectrum dominance", also Rumsfeld´s
"right to assassinate" terrorists, they all just reflect a tragicomical caricature
of the glory and nobility of previous metropolitan "great" wars.
Of course, here we cannot mention all the hundreds
of theories of war; for every war in patrian history, from the point of
view of natural and social sciences, there are dozens of conflicting, hostile
theories, contradicting each other.
Surely, all these theories reflect definite, non-related,
real, internal, universal changes in the international labour system. Each
one expresses a particularity, a peculiarity of the same unitary, united,
systemic World Order, of the Absolute Truth of Alienation, of Labour, of
Man. They are different glimpses of the true fascist face of capitalism and
imperialism.
Of course, all the "wars" on the planet, prior
to discovery and civilization, were classified as tribal feuds or religious
crusades. Only around the middle of the 17th century, at last, limited wars
were fought in the interest of individual sovereigns. Ever since, the art
of manoeuvre and belligerent strategy became decisive.
After the political victory of the bourgeoisie,
after the French Revolution, the definite capitalist objectives of war were
broadened; their revolutionary ideas began to appeal to the working masses;
now, not divinities, but revolutionary subjects were making war; Great Men
were waging Great Wars. Thus, in Post-Napoleonic Europe, Reason became
belligerent, Wars became rational, capitalistic, imperialistic. In fact, Reason,
Capital and War became synonymous.
In the fertile capitalistic womb of the Industrial
Revolution, precisely this war approach was fecundated by the
Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz in his well-known
classic On War (1832–37). At last, the Father Of All Modern
Wars, the European World War I, ushered in expansionist, imperialist, bellicose
mass destruction and genocide. And now, nearly a century later, the Father
of massive belligerent production of Weapons of Mass Destruction, who sold
arms to Iraq, the USA, claims that Hussein is a threat to the "free world".
Clausewitz, very cogently, very simply, defined
war as a rational instrument of foreign policy: in his own words, as “an
act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will.”
But, the totalitarian character of contemporary
wars did not fit into Clausewitzian theory of limited conflict -- new theories
had to account for this new belligerent phenomenon: war as not being mainly
a rational instrument of state policy; as from now onwards, war should also
serve broad ideologies, should globalize "infinite justice", should annihilate
"absolute evil".
Across the first half of the 20th century, in
all walks of life, the various conceptions of history, of making history,
of salvation history, intermingled, they replaced each other; similarly,
the corresponding theories on war were adapted to the ever-changing bourgeois
society, to its production, religion and ideology.
This paved the road for the belligerent, systemic
expansion of formal-logical war, directed against a double-bladed, Janus-headed
Non-A: Communist and/or Fascist Modern Wars. Now, new eschatologies like the
"rising of the proletariat" or the "coming into being of the master race"
entered war ideology.
Euro-American-Asian World War II and the subsequent
armament industry and the production of weapons of mass destruction, ushered
in an avalanche of new theories of war. Inter alia, we have two main
streams of current war theory and theory of war: the one attributing war to
certain innate biological and psychological factors or drives, and the other
attributing it to certain social relations (e.g., the class struggle) and
institutions (e.g., NASA, Pentagon, Kremlin, NATO, the State).
Now, briefly, what is the ideological essence of Biological Theories? The
ethnologists give Man innate drives, based on analogies drawn from animal
behaviour, from "animal warfare", as the major cause of global wars. Essentially,
the psychologist theory claims that the main cause can be found in homo
homini lupus himself, in his wolfish, spiritual, human nature. The
sociologists focus their explanations either on the internal organization
of states or on the international system within which these operate.
Within the context of social theory, the approach
of the early liberals is well-known, but after World War I, they began to
accept the conclusion that an unregulated international society did not automatically
tend toward peace and thus they advocated international organization, for
example, the future United Nations, or even the NATO, as a corrective.
How "correct" they were and are, we could witness in the current War On Iraq!
Thus, the liberals concentrated on political structures, to determine the
propensity of states to engage in war.
Socialist or Marxist theories on war went to the
other extreme; they declared the socio-politico-economic system of capitalist
states as the primary factor of war. Ironically, the liberal and socialists
theories eventually converged, see John Hobson and Lenin. Marx simply stated
that war is permanently generated by the class structure of society. Of course,
Stalin and his successors "revised" the socialist theory on war; they even
signed a devil's pact with Nazi Fascism.
Other theories imply that wars result ultimately
from the allegiance of men to their respective nations and from the intimate
connection between the nation and the State, e.g., racism, patriotism, We,
We Americans. As we know, this type of ideology not only led to self-determination
of the nations, to nationalism, but also straight to national
socialism, Stalinism, Fascism, Zionism, Apartheid and Nazism. The current
USA is already well on its way, with its Patriot Acts, its "Home Land" and
its "New Wars".
Over the last decades, parallel, pacifist opponents
of war came into being, some just want to "control" war. Basically,
they claim that War remains possible as long as individual states seek to
ensure their own self-preservation and to promote their own individual national
interests. Of course, in the last analysis, they favour a global solution,
a World State, Globalization, to control the military actions of individual
"aggressive" states.
Precisely this is the current legitimation of
America's New War, its "Infinite Justice" against "Absolute Evil" of
belligerent States, such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Cuba, North Korea,
etc. And therewith we have entered the epoch of Full Spectrum Dominance, pre-emptive,
aggressive wars.
Herewith I terminate my sojourn through the patrian
theories on war, and their war theories.
-----oOo-----
