God, since I was here, we had a war. That's pretty fuckin' weird, huh? A war?
Wasn't really a war, you know? A war is when TWO armies are fighting.
So, don't know if you could call it a war, exactly. You know.
The Persian Gulf Distraction is more like it, I think.
...
Remember how it started? They kept talking about the Elite Republican Guard in these hushed tones like these guys were the Boogeymen or something.
"Yeah, we're doing well now, but we have yet to face the Elite Republican Guard."
Like these guys were 12-feet-tall desert warriors.
[sound of footsteps crushing the ground]
Never lost a battle!
[crush, crush]
We shit bullets!
[crush, crush, crush]
Yeah, well, after two months of continuous carpet-bombing and not ONE reaction at all from them, they became, simply, the Republican Guard! Hahahahahahahaha!
Not nearly as elite as we would have led you to believe!
And after another month of bombing, they went from the Elite Republican Guard to the Republican Guard to the Republicans Made This Shit Up About There Being Guards Out There.
We hope you enjoyed your fireworks show!
It was so pretty and it took our mind off of domestic issues!
There's an interesting book called Aberration In The Heartland of The Real about Tim McVeigh (the OKC bomber) that talks about his role prior to the bombing on the front lines of the Iraq War and what he and his Bradley fighting vehicle unit did as they charged into Iraq:
It wasn't a war, it was a slaughter. The book ties this and other atrocities to the mindset that led to Tim McVeigh (and 2 others from his squadron) participating in the OKC bombing.
Not replying directly to you, except the "excuse anything" part:
It's a funny idea that you owe your opponent in a war a "fighting chance", when in fact the exact OPPOSITE is true. You, in fact, owe your own soldiers every reasonable effort to eliminate your opponent's ability to fight back, as that ability directly translates to your soldiers getting hurt or killed.
One other point of clarification. Fleeing is NOT surrendering. You can't let your enemy flee unhindered only to regroup later.
Yeah, I am a (POG but offensive) veteran of that conflict (different unit), so I have similar thoughts but did not want to alienate the largely civilian audience with them.
The last paragraph indicates that the Iraqis were surrendering. Killing surrendered opponents in a war engagement is a war crime, and also against US Army policy regarding surrendered opponents.
--------------------
"The incident, or series of incidents, occurred near the Saudi-Iraqi border as the First Mechanized Infantry Division, in their breaching effort, tore through over seventy miles of barbed wire, minefields, bunkers and trenches about three-feet wide and six-feet deep, defended by, according to division estimates, eight thousand Iraqi soldiers. After Howitzers and rocket launchers “rained hell” upon Iraqis in their trenches, the heavily armored Abrams and Bradley vehicles broke through, “and the real slaughter began.” During what came to be known as the Bulldozer Assault, Abrams tanks, outfitted with plows and scrapers, broached the trenches, shoveling mounds of sand into them, burying alive the Iraqis inside. Vulcan armored carriers and Bradley vehicles drove alongside the trenches, firing upon those attempting to surrender and others who continued to return fire with small arms. The Armored Combat Earthmovers (ACEs) cleaned up the horrifying scene afterwards by burying the scattered arms and legs still in view, so that none of the journalists arriving thirty-six hours later could report carnage.
The record shows that as early as June 5, 1995 (weeks after McVeigh’s arrest) the Jones Team was aware of the Bulldozer Assault and had noted their need to determine whether any member of his platoon “actually ran over Iraqi trenches (burying soldiers in them)” or if they had seen evidence of this as they approached the trenches. If any of his fellow soldiers spoke to the defense team about it, no such documentation was located in the Jones Collection. However, upon closer inspection it becomes clear that McVeigh’s company, his Bradley among them, spearheaded the breaching operation and led the Bulldozer Assault.
In the few reports about it, news outlets quoted at least two individuals whom McVeigh knew. In September 1991, one of them, Col. Anthony Moreno, who commanded the First Mechanized lead brigade against the most heavily defended trenches during the assault, described it, telling reporters “what you saw was a bunch of buried trenches with people’s arms and legs sticking out of them. For all I know, we could have killed thousands … as (Iraqi) soldiers saw what we were doing and how effective (ly) we were doing it, they began jumping out of their holes and surrendering. Our firepower kept the Iraqis down in their trenches. They were incapable of firing back.”
No existing biography of McVeigh explores the horror of the Bulldozer Assault in any depth, or even mentions it as such. In his book, Stickney simply wrote, “A lot of shooting by the Americans was directed at the enemy’s dug-in trenches.” Hamm acknowledged that McVeigh’s “platoon was assigned to ‘roll up’ the trenches and nearby artillery bunkers supporting them. This involved rolling over them in Bradleys, tanks, trucks, and giant earthmovers, suffocating to death hundreds of Iraqi troops in the trenches. This tactic not only effectively killed the enemy, but the huge pile of corpses provided a sturdy foundation for a smooth crossing point for the invading forces.” Herbeck and Michel did not directly address the Bulldozer Assault, the bodies buried alive or McVeigh’s role in it. Rather, they allude to it obliquely by observing that the motto of the VII Corp was “If it’s in front of us, it dies” and “because of the sounds made by the tanks rolling over Iraqis, U.S. soldiers began to refer to the dead they’d created as “crunchies.”
The handful of existing news reports about the incident provide further details. Participants later said that they had carefully planned and rehearsed the Bulldozer Assault weeks before it commenced, a claim confirmed by satellite photographs. One Captain described the psychological trauma he later suffered because of his role in the slaughter. The Iraqis, he said, had been throwing down their weapons and were begging the U.S. troops to take them prisoner. “I wish we could have,” he reflected, “[but] after [taking] so many thousands of prisoners, the order came down that it was endangering our men to capture anymore … so we called in the bulldozers.… I had to give the order, order men who drove the earthmovers to just cover up the trenches… I buried hundreds of men alive…if I’d disobeyed orders I should have been shot for insubordination on the battle field … that’s war.”"
I'm not quite sure what to make of this. There's a ton of claims in here, but I see only two sections that allude to war crimes, both alleging firing on soldiers attempting to surrender. There's so much in here about allegedly running over or burying alive Iraqi soldiers, to the point that it overshadows the actual alleged war crime. It's almost like the writer thinks that's the real atrocity here.
For reference, the notion of using armored vehicles to run over troops or bury troops in trenches is not new. Such a tactic has been employed since the First World War. And while that's not a pleasant way to die, it's not like gunshot or shrapnel wounds are that fun either.
He may be confusing action with Bradleys for the "bulldozer assault" where armored bulldozers were used to plow over a trench network rather than sending in ground troops to clear it out. Personally I don't see how getting hurt yourself has any impact on whether attacking someone is justified. There is no scenario in which killing someone with a knife is more justified than killing them with a gun or a bomb.
This is in inexcusably bad taste to not call it war given the tens of thousands of combat losses - at the very least - suffered on the Iraq end. The dead deserve to have their end marked as soldiers.
The alternate point - that victory in war is only legitimate if you suffer losses - is not only absurd but categorically ahistoric. Most of history's victors are winners by huge margins, because most close fought victories turn out to be . . and I'm not trying to be cute here . . Pyrrhic.
The deeper argument about media dominance would be a good conversation to have were it not almost always taking place from a place of bad faith, and I'm especially leery of an argument along these lines from Baudrillard. OK, let's back this up. So the media has perceptual bias. I dig that. Let's sample all the data we have, assign a spread, and get a number . . "No no no nonono . . ALL the information is bias!" Well, then, you're just asking me to get rid of the media so I can believe what you're telling me, and that's jacking my bias all the way up to eleven. So go sit on a marlinspike.
> This is in inexcusably bad taste to not call it war given the tens of thousands of combat losses
Well, the Wikipedia summary is short on details, so it's hard to debate the merits of the articles / book from the summary.
But: The general thesis is that "The Gulf War" doesn't meet the definition of "war." The point is to make you think about the purpose and merit of the Gulf War.
We should always question the legitimacy of wars. It's how we grow as a society and try to minimize (or eliminate) as much conflict as possible.
(I'm a believer that the root cause of war is psychopathic leadership and naive leadership. Preventing these situations is much easier said than done.)
No sense in paying some Scamazon book scalper $100 for a copy of a book that's no longer in print. (Paying scalpers doesnt pay the original author a cent.)
Thanks for sharing. Reading the (translated) piece seems more useful here than the Wikipedia summary which spends more time assuming the premise of the work and connecting it to other things.
I don't think it is a good series of essays. It's necessarily scattershot in its argumentation to address the pre-action, concurrent-action, and post-action angles. But almost none of the arguments come across as earnest. I feel like I'm reading a longform series of "gotcha" takedowns with the authorial intent simply to throw wrenches into any discussion without actually proposing anything or materially affecting how the discussion progresses.
'The Vietnam war wasn't a war because US Congress didn't declare war'. Oh man, I feel so dunked upon.
To emphasize my point that Baudrillard is doing nothing more than getting his name into op/ed columns, here's how he disdainfully reacts to a low-casualty high-consequence war.
> There is a profound scorn in the kind “clean" war which renders the other powerless without destroying its flesh, which makes it a point of honour to disarm and neutralize but not to kill. In a sense, it is worse than the other kind of war because it spares life. It is like humiliation: by taking less than life it is taking more than life.
Stop disrupting supply lines, destroying infrastructure, or planning feints. Real wars are all about body counts and nothing more. And don't dare you try military strategy, as that would _humiliate_ the enemy, which we all know is a fate worse than death.
I have a copy of the original thanks, I prefer books in paper. It took a while for a reasonable priced copy to come around (IIRC I got it for £20), but they do.
You could do, then it's on A4 paper and stapled, probably one-sided unless you have a fancy printer. Some nice things are worth paying for. I could get a crap bottle of wine for £5, or a really nice one for £20, both get you drunk.
In section 'Uses of the argument' there is mentioned current war in Ukraine. It is based on 'simulacra' part of original articles. Although true (this is how thing will be presented from now on), but original articles were mostly based on the fact that it was not war between peers.
There is this idea that US doctrine is based on air superiority. Which is not present in Ukraine as there are more or less peer armies. So 'use of the argument' is not really valid here (simulacra part can be used on its own).
So the Gulf War - a short campaign of overwhelming force presented selectively through Big Media is somehow the same as the Russian Invasion - a years-long grinding battle of attrition where massive amounts of battle footage are available online and knock-on effects are visible in your bills? I'm not buying this. Saying no war has ever existed unless you personally fought it doesn't seem like a very useful thing to say.
For people not aquainted with the hyperreal, Hypernormalization is a good documentary explaining it, free on youtube I believe, and done by Adam Curtis.
Since when does a war being one-sided make it not a war? Many, perhaps even most historical wars were one-sided. What should a one-sided conflict be called? The Gulf Disciplinary Action? The Kuwait Violent Assistance?
I'm confused what the real point of these essays are. Is it supposed to be a critique of the nature of mass media and our perceptions? Or is it a critique of the Gulf War?
"Baudrillard argued the Gulf War was not really a war, but rather an atrocity which masqueraded as a war.[1] Using overwhelming airpower, the American military for the most part did not directly engage in combat with the Iraqi army, and suffered few casualties."
So according to Baudrillard the goal of war is to have roughly even casualties, and long drawn out engagements that wither both sides?
This is a low blow, and I apologize for making it, but it is a good point.
Even though the book is a bit outdated, Stanislaw Lem foresaw a society dominated by misinformation in the book "Eden". The Soviet example he lived through must have helped.
AI will vastly accelerate that trend. Wild times ahead.
The author has the excuse that the title is a reference to a play, but it’s still rhetorical clickbait. “Haha, got ya! It’s true that the Gulf War did happen, but here’s my top 11 reasons why it’s more complex than often portrayed in popular media”.
I hold out hope that we are almost out of this postmodernist phase.
God, since I was here, we had a war. That's pretty fuckin' weird, huh? A war?
Wasn't really a war, you know? A war is when TWO armies are fighting.
So, don't know if you could call it a war, exactly. You know.
The Persian Gulf Distraction is more like it, I think.
...
Remember how it started? They kept talking about the Elite Republican Guard in these hushed tones like these guys were the Boogeymen or something.
"Yeah, we're doing well now, but we have yet to face the Elite Republican Guard."
Like these guys were 12-feet-tall desert warriors.
[sound of footsteps crushing the ground]
Never lost a battle!
[crush, crush]
We shit bullets!
[crush, crush, crush]
Yeah, well, after two months of continuous carpet-bombing and not ONE reaction at all from them, they became, simply, the Republican Guard! Hahahahahahahaha! Not nearly as elite as we would have led you to believe!
And after another month of bombing, they went from the Elite Republican Guard to the Republican Guard to the Republicans Made This Shit Up About There Being Guards Out There.
We hope you enjoyed your fireworks show!
It was so pretty and it took our mind off of domestic issues!
The Persian Gulf Distraction.