Date: Sun, 27 Jun 2004 08:44:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: "J.M. Adams" <ringfingers-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: [postanarchism] Brown: "The Deception of Strategy" (Review of Virilio's Book on Kosovo)


The Deception of Strategy

by Bill Brown

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/06/26/4408813

"We want them [the Iraqis] to quit, not to fight, so
that you have this simultaneous effect, rather like
the nuclear weapons at Hiroshima, not taking days or
weeks but minutes." -- Harlan Ullman, creator of the
"Shock and Awe" tactic, January 2003. 

"As we move toward a new Middle East, over the years
and, I think, over the decades to come . . . we will
make a lot of people very nervous. We want you
[Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and the leaders of
Saudi Arabia] nervous. We want you to realize now, for
the fourth time in a hundred years, this country and
its allies are on the march and that we are on the
side of those whom you -- the Mubaraks, the Saudi
Royal family -- most fear: We're on the side of your
own people." -- ex-CIA Director James Woolsey, 3 April
2003.

Today, 25 June 2004, just five days before the US
military is scheduled to "hand over" political control
of Iraq to a provisional governing body, it became
official: the Bush Administration has lost the support
of the American people for its "humanitarian" war
against Saddam Hussein. A public opinion poll
conducted by CNN-USA Today-Gallup has found that a
majority (54 percent) of the 1,005 Americans who
responded think that going to war in the first place
(no matter what the justification) was a mistake; they
are increasingly disappointed with the results, which
are appalling and grow worse every day. They are also
increasingly disillusioned with George W. Bush, whose
disapproval ratings are higher than they have ever
been.


This is the Bush Administration's second major
military campaign that has produced "mixed" results,
that is, a rapid and deceptively easy military victory
followed by a humiliating political defeat. The first
one, of course, was the phony "victory" over the
Taliban, which, though swift, failed to capture or
kill Osama Bin Laden, didn't so much weaken Al Qaeda
as force it to become more decentralized, mobile and
willing to work with other, more "localized" jihadist
groups, destabilized Afghanistan, and put new pressure
on Pakistan. The entire post-September 11th global war
on terrorism (GWOT) has been a disaster -- at least
from the political or strategic standpoint. The total
number of Al Qaeda-like terrorist attacks since "911"
has risen and spread to previously unaffected
countries, most notably Spain and Saudi Arabia. The
GWOT has also, of course, been a resounding success
from a certain, rather limited economic standpoint,
i.e., billion-dollar, no-bid, "cost-plus" contracts
with Halliburton, Kellogg Brown & Root, and other
politically well-connected companies


George W. Bush and the "chickenhawks" in his
Administration have no monopoly on "mixed"
(disastrous) military campaigns. The Clinton
Administration conducted at least two of them: the
1998 Cruie missile attacks on Osama Bin Laden's
positions in Afghanistan and the Sudan; and the phony
1999 "victory" over Slobodan Milosowic in Kosovo. And
George Bush Senior conducted at least two of them, as
well: the Gulf War of 1991, which left Saddan Hussein
in power and thus created the
precondition/justification for the second war against
Iraq; and the 1992 "humanitarian" intervention in
Somalia, for which Bill Clinton ended up taking the
blame. The last time America conducted a truly
successful military offensive, or at least one that
didn't leave the defeated country in the midst or on
the verge of a bloody civil war, was in 1988, when
Reagan ordered the US military to invade Panama and
arrest Manuel Noriega. But, like Reagan's invasion of
Grenada, this "victory" held no strategic significance
whatsoever.


Two themes emerge here: a long history of increasingly
humiliating political defeats, which may be said to
have started when the US military, despite its nuclear
arsenal and superior air force, lost the war against
Vietnam; and an increasing infantilization of the
American presidency. The step from Reagan to Bush
Senior was a step down, from Grandfather to Father;
and the step from Bush Senior to Clinton/Bush Junior
was literally a step from Father to Son. But this
change isn't merely a decrease in age. Unlike Reagan,
each one of these clowns (Bush Senior, Clinton and
Bush Junior) experienced some sort of memorable public
humiliation during their terms as President (throwing
up while at a official dinner in Japan, denying an
affair with Monica Lewinsky, and failing to win the
popular vote count, respectively). Ever since 1988,
there's been the increasing suspicion that these guys
just aren't the real people in control of the US
military. Instead, the US military seems to be in
control of them.


Over these same 16 years, there has been a self-avowed
"revolution in military affairs," that is, a rapid,
technology-fueled but incomplete movement away from
ground wars, troop-heavy deployments, mechanized
divisions and an essentially defensive posture (a la
NATO), and towards aero-space or "star" wars,
precision-guided munitions, "special" and covert
operations, and an offensive or "pre-emptive" posture
(the so-called Rumsfield Doctrine). The idea is that
one no longer defeats an enemy by attacking it on the
ground, but by attacking from the air with
increasingly lethal weapons. Because there will be far
more deaths among the civilian population than among
the armed forces, one must also be skilled at
"relating" to the mass media, controlling "spin,"
deploying decoys, creating distractions, and
circulating disinformation.


Paul Virilio's Strategie de la Deception is one of the
few books that addresses itself to all of these
developments. Originally published in 1999, it is made
up of four newspaper articles Virilio wrote during and
immediately after the Kosovo War. In 2000, Verso
published a translation by Chris Turner under the
title Strategy of Deception. Despite September 11th,
which is the "gulf" that supposedly separates us from
the world as it was back in 1999, Strategy of
Deception retains its relevance. Indeed, it may even
be much more relevant today than it was five years
ago.


In a "Translator's Note," the entirety of which is
quoted below, Chris Turner explains why Strategy of
Deception is a "disappointing" rendering of the book's
title into English.



It is always disappointing to report something lost in
translation. In this case, the element lost is that of
disappointment itself, for this is, of course, the
everyday meaning of the French word 'la deception.'
The term does, however, also have a more recondite
military sense, the deception of missiles being the
overall process of the deflection of such weapons from
their course (this part is, technically, their
seduction) and their redirection to some other --
preferably harmless -- target. Virilio uses the term
to refer to the bundle of techniques of decoying,
distraction and disinformation which make up a
classically 'deceptive' strategy in the English sense.
However, in his title he is alluding also, and more
directly, to the (possibly intended) disappointment
and disillusionment which remains after the massive
Allied military efforts in the former Yugoslavia,
where, were we ninteenth-century speakers of English,
we might contend (pace Jamie Shea [cf. James Mills,
The History of British India, 1817]) that 'never was
expectation more completely deceived.'


And so, there are three meanings of "deception": 1)
disappointment and disillusionment; 2) the deflection
of missiles; and 3) disinformation, decoys and
distractions ("classic deception"). By choosing to
employ deception, instead of tromperie or duperie,
both of which denote classic deception, Virilio has
insisted on the importance of disappointment and
deflection. Unlike the other meaning of deception,
these two are double-edged, like a Roman sword: not
only are disappointment and deflection weapons that
can be used against an external enemy, but they can
also (Turner says "possibly") be used internal
enemies, rival factions and the like.


These meanings make Virilio's book different from
others on "the subject." Note well that all of the
authors cited in the massive bibliography entitled
Deception in Warfare, which was compiled in 1996 by
the Air University Library at Maxwell Air Force Base,
Alabama, concentrate exclusively on decoys and
distractions, and do not touch upon the other two
meanings of "deception" at all. Same thing with
authors on the subject of the deflection or
interception of in-coming missiles. There is an
extensive literature on such relevant subjects as the
re-programmable "Tomahawk" Cruise Missile, "Patriot"
Anti-Missile Launchers, and the National Missile
Defense System, aka "Star Wars," but the various
authors define the deflection/interception of missiles
as a tactic, not a strategy, and their works have
little or nothing to do with either disappointment or
classic deception.


Virilio's basic point is that, despite or perhaps
because of the spectacular "success" of Hiroshima,
"when a single B 29 bomber and a single atom bomb put
an end to the war in the Pacific," it is impossible to
conduct a politically successful or "humanitarian" war
if its ideology and strategy are based upon on the
false premise that wars can be won using nothing but
air power. Virilio points out that, "during the Cold
War years, the development of 'intercontinental
missiles' and control of satellite space for the
guidance of high-precision missiles sadly caused us to
forget that aero-spatial war goes hand in hand with
extremes of destruction and the imperative need for an
absolute weapon, whether it be an atomic or neutron
device, or chemical/bateriological agents." Because
this fact was forgotten, "or rather obscured by the
illusion of Allied victory in Iraq [in 1991]," a
"fatal error was [able] to arise during the Clinton
presidency of an all-out multiplication of these
'automatic strikes,' aimed at punishing so-called
'rogue states,' from which the USA aspires to protect
the world by way of its telematic technologies." That
"fatal error" continues to be made under Bush Junior:
for both him and Bill Clinton, Iraq and Afghanistan
were "rogue states" that richly deserved and would
benefit frompunitive bombings from the sky. Both
presidents were quite wrong, and in both cases.


Thus a question arises: In whose interest works the
strategy of deceiving infantilized American Presidents
so that they once again make the fatal error of
relying exclusively upon air power? The answer seems
relatively-straight forward: the faction of the
military-industrial complex that concentrates on
nuclear weaponry and delivery systems, the "nuclear
priesthood," the true believers in "mini-nukes." But,
like many of his other books, Virilio's Strategy of
Deception isn't a long, systematic or comprehensive
effort. Instead, it is short, fast and full of
lightning flashes, puns and coinages. As a result,
even though he's the one who has managed to pose the
question "Who profits from the strategy of deception?"
Virilio doesn't give his answer the attention that it
obviously deserves.


-- Bill Not Bored, 25-26 June 2004.



===="What war is not a private affair, and, inversely, what wound is not a war that comes from society as whole?"

- Gilles Deleuze, Logique du Sens (1969)


		
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