So I have to disagree with the current dismissal of him on the list.
Actually, I thought the excerpts (which work against coherence no doubt, as does a lot of translation) was some of the best stuff I've read about 9-11.
The 'psychic' connection here is one I made immediately after watching the second plane hit: this was some sort of payback for the Persian Gulf War and the US presence in the ME.
That was a gut reaction and now I can rationalize it: In the PG War, the US used overwhelming air power and presented it in a mostly sanitized news media show (it only slipped out of control when we saw the Highway of Death--which most Americans didn't much care about anyway).
The terrorists used air power and put on a news media show that hadn't been sanitized by the Dept. of Defense or the collabrators at the networks.
Baudrillard's discourse is a brave attempt (brave because in order to get your attention he invites miscomprehension) to make sense of something no one has made much sense of. What Baudrillard is doing is helping us through his language to see how the terrorists think. He might even be showing us what future terrorists in the making think. And he shows how the reaction for revenge is going to be not only awful but insipid and predictable.
Which was more exiciting: watching WTC go down for the upteenth time or anything you've seen in the media about the campaign against terror? It's worse than slow news month now, only one feels everything is at stake but there are no clear reasons why that should be so.
Who is acting and who is reacting, since we all knew the script to the US response 3 weeks before it happened? The only surprise was that it's Afghanistan and not Afghanistan and Iraq (though the continued actions against Iraq are pretty much out of the media show). .
Doesn't he really get into some sort of rough, tentative language what many have deep down felt?
Reading it, I felt myself reliving those inexpressible, contradictory emotions, but this time it was in touch with something that could be called meaningful language. What did I feel? For one, that possibly the one thing I thought no one could take away from me would be under threat: the freedom to think freely.
That I suddenly had to care about all those souls I didn't know dying--even if few in Manhattan would not give a shit if Fukui City had been bombed or if ten times that died in an earthquake somewhere. Like why should I care anymore for 5000 in NYC than 50,000 in Kabul (the number who died when the Northern Alliance fought their civil war there).
Suddenly the circumstances are supposed to make me care and , why, hell, I'm worse than the terrorist if quite frankly I say, I'm sorry I can't feel anything that simple.
> So it's exactly the contrary of the cowardice they >are accused of, and
it's exactly the contrary of what >the Americans did in the Gulf War, for
>example (and what they're doing again in Afghanistan): >invisible target,
operational liquidation.
Yes, think about it. The use of mostly secretive unseen air power to maximize the enemy's death while all but eliminating it on the US side (it would seem outside of the the Scud incident, US and UK troops faced far more danger from their own side's weapons).
But didn't we speculate why everyone reacted to 9-11 with 'cowardly' as well as 'evil' but we couldn't explain whether dying in an act of terror was 'cowardly' or not?
Didn't we take the most basic meaning out of battle and war? Whatever else you could say, wasn't the bottom line of combat at least we weren't afraid to put our own lives on the line for what we believed in?
Are we surprised then that all too many Americans didn't draw any negative lessons from the Gulf War? Are we surprised then that a terror network isn't afraid of us (they don't think we believe in anything we think is worth really fighting for) and welcomes a fight?
>That we dreamed of this event, that >everyone without exception
>dreamed of it, because no one can fail to >dream of the destruction of
>any power become so hegemonic - that >is unacceptable for the Western
>moral conscience
Some people were being paid to dream of this--only they missed the method. They were dreaming of attack with weapons of mass destruction (the present president included). No one foresaw box cutters and pilot training--though a friend and I used to often remark what a joke security on domestic flights seemed at times.
What was the American complicity in its own destruction? I'm not sure I follow Baudrillard here, but I have a few of my own views.
War didn't count as something evil or something to be avoided at all costs so long as only the other side died. Since we couldn't know their deaths, it's like they never existed in the first place.With that as a starting point, you could rationalize damned near anything--and we did.
What a resounding answer the terrorists gave to the US spin on post-modern war (the US's combination of Powell doctrine of overwhelming force with political resolve and the emergent doctrine that pure air power could win wars).
And it is a way of thinking that knows the US very well. The US could slaughter the retreating Iraqi Army from the air, but it was held back from going into Baghdad because then there would have been considerable US casualties and combat deaths (Bush even said this in an interview one year later, while at the same time he was assuring everyone the war had not been about democracy) .
The US government and military were all too willing to risk civilian deaths with bunker buster bombs to kill Hussein or to impose sanctions that most Americans would support because most Americans would never have to experience what the effects actually were. But any combat casualties taking Baghdad were unacceptable.
Pres. Bush and Co were relieved and more than a bit surprised that they had pulled off the use of so much fire power and bombing tonnage without having a single setback to the prosecution of the war. And from that a new doctrine emerged.
>...There's no solution to this extreme situation, above >all not war,
which only offers a situation of deja-vu, >with the same deluge of military
forces, phantom >information, useless pummeling, devious and
>pathetic discourse, technological deployment and >intoxication. In short,
like the Gulf war, a non-event, >an event that doesn't really take place
And who needs to read novels when the real is so unreal? Someone who wants to refute Baudrillard (and that is exactly what he wants you to do) had better explain just what is going on in Afghanistan.
What is the most significant thing going on there? That war-torn life goes on much as it has for two decades? That the Taliban is on the run before Northern Alliance forces because they gave up a city that seems to have exchanged hands more time than you can count on your hands. That US air forces are tracking down and killing the Taliban (and minimizing civilian casualties because they say they are) ?
That OBL says he has nukes, when his best teams used box cutters, some piloting skills, and near-perfect execution? That hundreds of thousands will die from a humanitarian crisis that the war is only going to make worse?
How meaningful or real is any of it if we can't experience it and have to rely on CNN? I want to turn it off , but I know it won't go away. On the other hand, I know by leaving the TV on I won't be any nearer an understanding than I was 30 minutes before or 24 hours before or three weeks ago. My first reaction to this was, it can't change things since I'm here not there. But now it's like an ideational monster that just won't go away.
It might come down to earth when US forces are on the ground fighting building to building for Kabul and Kandahar, but what makes me think that the US will even put both cities' entire populations at risk to avoid having to risk US troops?
> the terrorists undoubtedly knew they
could count on this inadmissible complicity. <
Of course we could say the acts were unbelievable, cowardly and insane, but we knew there was a reasoning and collective will behind it. And it was a reasoning that knew us all too well. It said: you may think we are crazy, but at least we are not afraid to die for what we believe in.
Doesn't that carry more weight with some than saying only the enemy should die. How can you fight evil when you know, deep down, you don't believe in a goddamned thing?
Charles Jannuzi