Slouching Toward Baghdad by Mike Davis

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Slouching Toward Baghdad
>by Mike Davis
>ZNet
>February 28, 2003
<snip>
>But what if the RNA/NCW's Second Coming of Warfare doesn't arrive as 
>punctually promised? What happens if the Iraqis or future enemies 
>find ways to foil the swarming sensors, the night- visioned Special 
>Forces, the little stair-climbing robots, the missile-armed drones? 
>Indeed, what if some North Korean cyberwar squad (or, for that 
>matter, a fifteen-year-old hacker in Des Moines) manages to crash 
>the Pentagon's "system of systems" behind its battlespace panopticon?
>
>If the American war-fighting networks begin to unravel (as partially 
>occurred in February 1991), the new paradigm - with its "just in 
>time" logistics and its small "battlefield footprint" - leaves 
>little backup in terms of traditional military reserves. This is one 
>reason why the Rumsfeld Pentagon takes every opportunity to rattle 
>its nuclear saber.
>
>Just as precision munitions have resurrected all the mad omnipotent 
>visions of yesterday's strategic bombers, RNA/NCW is giving new life 
>to monstrous fantasies of functionally integrating tactical nukes 
>into the electronic battlespace. The United States, it should never 
>be forgotten, fought the Cold War with the permanent threat of 
>"first use" of nuclear weapons against a Soviet conventional attack. 
>Now the threshold has been lowered to Iraqi gas attacks, North 
>Korean missile launches, or, even, retaliation for future terrorist 
>attacks on American city.
>
>For all the geekspeak about networks and ecosystems, and millenarian 
>boasting about minimal, robotic warfare, the United States is 
>becoming a terror state pure and simple: a 21st century Assyria with 
>laptops and modems.
>
>Mike Davis is the author of City of Quartz, Ecology of Fear, and 
>most recently, Dead Cities, among other works. He now lives in San 
>Diego.
>
>[This article first appeared on http://www.tomdispatch.com, a weblog 
>of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate 
>sources, news and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in 
>publishing and author of The End of Victory Culture.]

The best weapons in the hands of the Empire are neither the 
Revolution in Military Affairs nor Network Centric Warfare nor even 
the threat of "First Use" of Nukes -- rather, the best weapons are 
economic sanctions and weapons inspections.  Economic sanctions have 
devastated the Iraqi people, weakening their morale and fighting 
capacity.  Weapons inspections have and continue to destroy what 
little weapons the Iraqi state still possesses and to allow the 
Empire to collect all the intelligence it wants.  In Iraq, the 
Pentagon will be able to fight its first dream war: use sheer 
overwhelming firepower ("Shock and Awe," the Second Coming of 
Hiroshima) against a defenseless foe that it has disarmed ahead of 
time.
-- 
Yoshie

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