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Response to article Constant Conflict
US Army War College Quarterly Parameters, Summer 1997
By Barbara Langford
03/08/06 "ICH"
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The aim of the US is clearly stated in the first paragraph - that
is, to subject cultures and civilizations to American economic and
cultural supremacy, and to persevere until they have overrun the
entire planet. Maj. Peters then kindly demonstrates for us how this
aim is to be realised.
His recurring premise is that the management of information is, in
our epoch, the sole factor upon which a life worth living, i.e. the
‘good life’ by American standards, rests. Already the puerile and
mind-boggling assumption that all civilizations aspire to the same
ideals as the US, and that all civilizations are desperate to
acquire the same tools to attain the same goal. This prevalent and
tiresome American assumption that all the world wants to be like
them is painfully clear here, and it is upon this assumption that
the entire argument rests. The reason for the prevailing strife,
according to Peters, is the jealousy of other societies, a jealousy
that breeds hatred for the “haves” ie the US on the part of the rest
of the world, which he defines as the “have nots.” It is our sense
of ineptitude, our lack of understanding of the 'new American
century’ our failure to be able to participate in life on American
terms that prompts our discontent. Those who have gone along with
the US programmes – usually by way of puppet governments – are,
apparently, our “more fortunate neighbours” who further incite our
hatred and envy. The first false premise.
The second false premise is that the need to compete is the life
blood of any workable society. The fact that the US has rammed its
laws favouring the juggernaut corporations down the throats of the
peasant farmer who, previously, was able to support his family, is
dubbed “fair competition” and upon this premise the sentiments of
the victims expressed from the urban ghettoes to which they and
their families have been dispatched, are only inspired by pure
hatred because they’re not of the calibre to ‘make it’ – again, in
American terms. Their former lives of honest work with dignity,
independence, some standing in the community and freedom from debt
are merely tokens of a “golden age that never existed.” But remember
– “There is no effective option other than competitive performance.”
It’s true that traditional cultures are ever-menaced by the onset of
creeping US culture – one cannot but be aware of the tiny bright
plastic entrepreneurial obscenities that litter the landscape of
civilised cultures. But as a French friend told me when I expressed
astonishment at this assault on the French landscape and its
apparent success, “It’s just something new. The French will get
bored with it after a while, as anyone does with some transient
novelty, and move on.” That which seems to have happened, by all
accounts, to MacDonald’s, whose business, it was reported, has
fallen of. Perhaps people are recognizing that an equally
fast-prepared omelette aux fines herbes avec une verre de Sauvignon
blanc is always preferable to cheap-cut-chopped-beef-on-a bun, even
with the ubiquitous Ronald as company.
It’s also true that, in this age of advanced technology, the
blue-collar worker is out in the cold. But we are led to believe
that his disenchantment comes from his frustration at comparing the
soap tripe such as ‘Dynasty’ and ‘Dallas’ with his lot and the
disparity between his world and this other which, he finds,
‘devilishly enchanting.’ Oddly, having established that modern
technology has effectively excluded this “discarded foreigner” from
the circuit of self-sufficiency, Peters goes on to state that those
same dispossessed can “accept no personal guilt for his failure,”
hence the sense of victimization, hence the spawning of “dynamic
hatreds.”
“Transience” and “impermanence” is indeed the essence of much of the
culture of Hollywood - garbage can always be recycled. It is a
culture which can indeed be a powerful tool to warp and debase the
average healthy minds of impressionable people. This isn’t however,
a universal phenomenon as Peters supposes. Apropos of the link
Peters attempts to make between the transience of American culture
and the transience of “beauty,” “passion” and “the quality of light
on a winter afternoon” (!!) (exclamations mine) we need not dwell on
such a statement. These are subjects drawn upon by our timeless,
ageless poets who created the priceless treasures that will outlast
all the hyperbole and braying of the Hollywood fanfare machine.
Nothing transient there.
Peters is right that the primal instincts of man – sex and violence
- (going back to the age of the cudgel and churned out by Hollywood)
are in evidence everywhere. Along with their paltry moral quest –
the triumph of brute force, and to the-victor-the-spoils-sex goes
the irresistible attraction, apparently, of the comfort, riches and
ease that will characterize a life won by our Hollywood hero. The
popularity of such themes very likely rests on the often
insupportable void that exists within the psyche of many
contemporary societies, a void brought about by the failure to feel
complete in their world, a world torn to shreds by competition,
warfare, stress, overprogramming, poverty, dysfuntional
relationships, and so on. Drugs, movies, alcohol, fantasyland -
anything to assuage the tension, anything to download the overworked
mind, to afford an escape, an escape which can also pollute at the
same time. Don’t worry about not having yet produced the ‘Iliad’,
Maj. Peters – the moral impact of that work would be far from
Hollywood’s comprehension. It has to do with heroism, but not in any
neanderthal sense.
It would seem that it is the ‘information victims’ that will see no
other resort but to violence. In accepting this premise – that
violence is perpetrated by those unable to meet the challenges to
compete with US techno/informational superiority, we see their
discontent erupting into a landscape of conflict on all fronts. All
because of a failure to be able to compete. And this is where the US
military comes in: ‘the de facto role of the US armed forces will be
to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural
assault. T/o those ends we will do a fair amount of killing.’
In order to possess that most prized possession – a military force
sine qua non – we are told that the education system in the US has
been geared to emphasize techno-supremacy. America’ s children,
then, are being trained to become information robots and groomed to
make “mean techno-warriors.” They will enter a world of “hatred,
jealousy and greed” – emotions that will “set the terms of the
struggles.” And: “Our potential national weakness will be the
failure to maintain the moral and raw physical strength to thrust
that bayonet into an enemy’s heart.’ (bold print added). So
America’s children must not display such weakness. The thrust would
seem to be to raise a generation of fighting robots, nothing more,
explicitly stated thus: “The complex human-machine interface
developing in the US military. . . “ And “These kids are going to
make mean techno-warriors. . .”
Another example of American-style ‘positive thinking’ is: “We will
outcreate, outproduce. . . .outfight the rest of the world. We can
out-think them, too.” As the US se;f-inflates, the rest of the
world, the “foreign discarded.” shrinks within its sense of
impotence and inferiority in the light of US invincibility whose
creativity, clearly stated, “is devastating.”
Clearly nothing can stop this indefatigable force: “Yes, foreign
cultures are reasserting their threatened identities – usually with
marginal, if any, success.” A trail of twaddle ensues to reassure
the concerned American who might express some disquiet, indicating
the presumptuous and misled nature of any other culture to affirm
its own identity.
The drift goes on to describe a growing mutability within the
hierarchy of the military. Gone is the top-down iron fist of
authority, apparently. Such blurred delegation of power might
explain the aberrations at Abu Ghraib prison, or Guantanamo, or the
small-group attacks on civilians in Iraq. To some the
no-accountability sounds like the green light for the indulgence of
the bestial instinct.
Sad but, according to Peters, true: “Most world cultures are
imprisoning” and people rage over what they cannot escape. It would
follow, then, that we would prefer to place our feet on the rotten
surface of the ease, the comfort, the flab that comes from the
attainment of low ideals. What Peters hasn’t realised is that
driving societies down to the depths of their endurance will only
force them to dig ever more deeply into what they are capable of.
‘Far from wanting to escape their identity and join the Dynasty
crowd, they are resisting to preserve it. Their identity has been
forged not by what they have parked in their garage or what they
wear on their backs, but what they have within themselves. It is a
conflict, indeed - a conflict between these two forces.
I know which side I’d rather be on.
Barbara Langford - langford.barbara @ wanadoo.fr
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