[Esus]

Hey, just thought I'd drop this quote into the arena. Please, don't ignore it.

The society Orwell describes in Nineteen Eighty-Four is part of a global system dominated by three superpowers. Oceana, where the story unfolds, is perpetually at war with either Eastasia or Eurasia and war is used to justify harsh political and economic measures while simultaneously legitimizing the protective role of Big Brother and The Party, the state’s leadership.

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. [Orwell, 1949:161]

The equivalence of war and peace is, in some senses, a truism in Western history. Since we began to live in societies characterized by class divisions, which is to say for a very long time, war has been used by the elites to distract us from other more pressing problems or dangerous pursuits. Knights were sent on Crusades to distract them from fighting amongst themselves for limited land and riches, excess population has often been used as cannon fodder in pointless and hopeless conflicts and both world wars have coincidentally resolved crises in the capitalist system. It should be remembered that the first ‘Great War’ came just around the time of the crash of the first experiment in globalized liberal economics. The second one, of course, ended the Great Depression, which itself galvanized Western governments to impose rules and limitations on capitalists in order to prevent a repetition of this most obvious demonstration of capitalism run amok. War does indeed distract and since the birth of the nation-state in the last 200 years, it also inspires nationalistic fervour, thus turning criticism away from the homeland and focusing it on the enemy ‘over there.’

Since the Second World War, another type of ‘war is peace’ has emerged to keep us busy without the expense and mess of actually sending us off to fight and burying our corpses when we return. This new type of war is designed to be un-winnable and un-endable because enemies are defined as and by ideas. The Cold War pitted the doctrines of Communism (also known as Socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism) against Capitalism (usually simply referred to as Freedom or Democracy). Some would have us believe that this ‘war’ has been won. Certainly, it was won or lost with the lives of non-Westerners many times on many far away battlefields. It is true that the Soviets no longer represent the challenge of an alternative system. But, it is unclear at best that anything resembling Freedom has graced the lives of the majority of humanity as a result of our supposed victory – this, despite Capitalism’s rampage across planet Earth.

Since the end of the Cold War, there has been some scrambling around looking for another diversion. The War Against Drugs was only moderately successful in getting our attention, though it certainly has the attention of the peasants of Latin America and Asia who have had their crops destroyed along with their livelihoods. In particular, it has the attention of the Afghan people who are starving after 3 years of drought and no poppies to trade and the Colombians who are now governed by a former paramilitary warlord who is prepared to suspend any and all civil liberties to fight the guerrillas in the name of this war. But it never really caught on as a crusade the way the Cold War did. One might argue that it didn’t work because such a war could be won if anyone actually had the desire to win it but the real battle had to be fought in the consuming rather than the producing countries. Reporting time and again that drug use was on the rise while spending billions to thwart distant producers and doing precious little to improve the lives of deprived children at home just got a little tiresome. We tuned out.

Thankfully, a chap named Osama Bin Laden decided to do the unthinkable and attack the biggest of the Big Brothers at home. And so was born the War Against Terror (WAT). Now this one has the ring of a winner and may rival the Cold War for its ability to distract and divert over the long haul. It will work as a long-term distraction because it has all the essential ingredients of a permanent diversion

o It is un-winnable. There is no point when we will be able to conclude, once and for all, that this war is over. Unlike the Cold War, where the fall of a wall was a cogent symbol of victory, no walls will crumble in this war. Even if we chased terrorists into the most remote corners, there would always be the fear that we were brewing more somewhere. In fact, the very policies of such a war will brew new terrorists like bacteria in petrie dishes. This, from an Orwellian point of view, is the perfect situation.

o There will always be an enemy. Given that ‘terrorists’ can be constantly created out of any conflict between groups, we will never run out of an enemy even if Osama is eventually run to ground. Currently, Muslim dissidents in China have been granted this prestigious title as have Muslim ‘extremists’ in Indonesia. So, even if our repressive economic and political policies don’t hatch new terrorists, we can simply ‘invent’ them anywhere anyone resists anything.

The face will always be there to be stamped upon. The heretic, the enemy of society, will always be there, so that he can be defeated and humiliated over again. … The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed. [Orwell, 1949:215, 149]

o It is a powerful motivator. Like the Cold War with its missile shelters and B-movies about Russian invasions, the WAT strikes fear into our hearts. Terrorists, like the Russians before them, are believed to be ‘evil’ and capable of invading our most sacrosanct spaces. As an added bonus, opposing evil can only make one good and everyone wants to be good. Of course, one is also prohibited from critisizing the good guys lest it be construed as siding with evil.

The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible. [Orwell, 1949:31]

o Most important information is secret. Again, like the Cold War, the WAT allows the experts and pundits to exempt themselves from full disclosure. We can be fed limited and erroneous information and if we should discover the truth, we will be told that it was kept from us for security reasons. This will make it very difficult for us to critically assess our ‘enemies’ or oppose our ‘protectors.’

o Nothing can be as important as The War. Today, we are girding ourselves for another pointless conflict and the elites are delighted that in our humble and confused concern over whether, when and how to engage in war, we are not asking the tough questions about the future of a global economy or environment. These concerns pale in the face of looming Terror despite the fact that every piece of evidence tells us that if we don’t soon pay attention to the state of nature, it will be irrelevant who wins or loses. Likewise, if we don’t soon pay attention to the great global class divide, we may find ourselves starving for those cheap imports we are so dependent on as poor nations retrench and withdraw from the lion’s den of the world market. We may not miss the cut flowers and diamonds, but we will sorely miss the oil and food.

The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival. [Orwell, 1949:156]

So we are in the midst of a perfectly Orwellian war as peace, war as distraction and war as self-destruction. How many will die and how many more will live anomic lives as a result? The end won’t come by pumping more money into weapons of mass destruction, not even ‘smart’ ones. This war can only end when we all refuse to fight on these terms; when we all return to the table as equals with no place set for those who benefit from continued fear and hate.