Unseen Gulf War

A few days after the end of the Gulf ground war, an Iraqi soldier lies in the desert near where his convoy of vehicles was bombed and strafed by Allied aircraft as the convoy attempted to retreat from Kuwait back to Iraq. This was a different and much less exposed convoy that was bombed, from the Mile of Death. This convoy was on an obscure road to the north and east of Kuwait City. This attack left most of the Iraqi soldiers in the convoy carbonized and their bodies were buried by Allied Forces at the end of the war.

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Part of the ‘Virtual Iraq’ a soldier undergoing therapy sees.

(Institute for Creative Technologies)

March 8, 2007, 1:35 pm

‘The Iraq War Is Not Taking Place’

By ROBERT MACKEY

The French philosopher and critic Jean Baudrillard, who died this week, famously claimed that “the gulf war did not take place.” As Patricia Cohen explained in his obituary in The New York Times,

One of his better known theories postulates that we live in a world where simulated feelings and experiences have replaced the real thing. This seductive “hyperreality,” where shopping malls, amusement parks and mass-produced images from the news, television shows and films dominate, is drained of authenticity and meaning. …

In 1986 he published a kind of travelogue called “America,” in which he wrote, “America is the original version of modernity,” referring to what he considered the almost complete blurring of reality and unreality. To his French readers, he said: “We are a copy with subtitles.”

Mr. Baudrillard’s work, or rather what he termed “misunderstandings” of his work, also inspired The Matrix.

It’s hard not to think of Mr. Baudrillard when listening to an interview with an American psychologist named Skip Rizzo on Guardian Unlimited’s Science Weekly podcast. Professor Rizzo, who recently addressed the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on “Therapy in Virtual Worlds — Comparing Mental Health Applications Using Individually Administered Virtual Reality and Second Life,” has been experimenting with the use of virtual reality environments adapted from video games to treat veterans of the Iraq war who are suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. As The Guardian’s James Randerson explains:

A course of the experimental therapy might begin with the patient standing next to a Humvee truck in the virtual world – which is based on the computer game Full Spectrum Warrior. Once they are comfortable the therapist might ask them to get in, start the engine and drive away. “Over the course of the sessions we gradually have them do things that are closer to their traumatic memory,” said Professor Rizzo. “We start adding in guns, bombs, insurgents, debris on the road, being attacked and so forth. We do this in a very measured and progressive fashion based on what the client can handle.”

This NPR report on an earlier stage of Professor Rizzo’s work includes video and audio of what a soldier undergoing the therapy sees and hears during the treatment and describes the mechanics:

The soldier being treated wears VR goggles and headphones. Using a tablet-based interface, a therapist can activate or remove the sounds of gunshots or the sight of smoke, depending on a patient’s reaction. The idea is to re-introduce the patients to the experiences that triggered the trauma, gradually, until the memory no longer incapacitates them.

James Randerson writes that Professor Rizzo told him that he has now been able to add vibrations and even smells to the simulation to make it more evocative and emotional.

Different smells are used, including gunpowder, cordite, burning rubber, Iraqi spices, barbecued lamb and body odor…. Researchers are looking into replicating the smells of blood and burnt flesh. “I’m not sure we need to go to that level of intensity … but it is something we are considering and exploring.”

The NPR report on Professor Rizzo’s project — which is a collaboration between the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California and the Office of Naval Research — concludes with this observation:

Early results from trials suggest virtual reality therapy is uniquely suited to a generation raised on video games. The gaming aspect of the treatment also helps to lessen the stigma associated with getting therapy.

thelede.blogs.nytimes.com

The Persian Gulf TV War

This study examines the propaganda war waged by the American media. The author attacks the role of the media during the conflict (Gulf War 1991) accusing them of silencing those wishing to voice their opposition to the war and so providing George Bush Sr. with the platform necessary to preach his war policies.

By using their power and influence, the media were able to spoon-feed the American public with their version of the war. As a result of this action, they failed to assume their democratic responsibilities to report on all aspects of the conflict.

Goto: Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | Bibliography

www.gseis.ucla.ed




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Violence Re/Presentation Gulf War & Beyond

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.

-- Nineteen Eighty-Four

Be it thy course to busy giddy minds
With foreign quarrels.

-- Henry IV, Part 2

Ordering the New World:

Violence and its Re/Presentation in the Gulf War and Beyond

Simon Chesterman

Abstract

Jean Baudrillard's controversial thesis advanced during the Gulf War that it was in no sense a "real" war and his provocative claim that "the Gulf War did not take place" were lambasted at the time as exposing the political bankruptcy of postmodern scholarship.

At their most extreme, such critiques asserted an ideological complicity between anti-realist or irrationalist doctrine and "the crisis of moral and political nerve" said to be afflicting Western intellectuals.

In this article, I explore the theoretical and practical consequences of taking Baudrillard's discussion of the Gulf War qua non-event seriously.

In particular, I use his thesis as the departure point for a consideration of the presentation and representation of violence in the post-Cold War era more generally.

Crucially, I argue that Baudrillard's approach opens up a productive line of inquiry into violence, and its antagonistic and symbiotic relationship to order.

This critique has implications for the analysis of international relations, but may also open up a more productive engagement between international relations and international law.

In distinct ways, each discourse holds statism as axiomatic as the unitary locus of power and legitimacy respectively.

A critique of violence may provoke a doctrinal reassessment of the a priori equation of order and law that presently legitimates the realist presumptions of international relations and forecloses an interrogation of the theoretical bases of international law.

Overture

Since this war was won in advance, we will never know what it would have been like had it existed.

We will never know what an Iraqi taking part with a chance of fighting would have been like.

We will never know what an American taking part with a chance of being beaten would have been like.

We have seen what an ultra-modern process of electrocution is like, a process of paralysis or lobotomy of an experimental enemy away from the field of battle with no possibility of reaction.

But this is not a war, any more than 10,000 tons of bombs per day is sufficient to make it a war. Any more than the direct transmission by CNN of real time information is sufficient to authenticate a war.

-- Baudrillard

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__________

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Intelligence, Evil, Lucid Pact

The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact Jean Baudrillard We are at war. Human cultures are divided into two basic types, two antagonistic forces, one based on symbolic exchange, which is dual and reciprocal, and one based on money and sign exchange, which is totalising. Non-western societies can create genuinely symbolic, durable cultures. But the western world-system, based on a logic of empire, is designed to create an integrated and sealed reality, to snap tight around the world and its image. If the first is indestructible and the second is irresistible, who can win and what will victory look like? The answer may lie in the capacity for violence in the world-system itself, threatening that system from within with the purest of symbolic forms, the challenge of resistance. The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact is the summation of Baudrillard's work over twenty years. It is the essential analysis of the fundamental conflict of our time. About the editors Jean Baudrillard is one of the most influential philosophical and cultural critics writing today. His books include Simulacra and Simulation, The Perfect Crime, America, Seduction, The System of Objects, Cool Memories, Symbolic Exchange and Death and the Transparency of Evil. Translated by Chris Turner. Chris Turner has translated many of the key works of French theory over the last two decades, particularly the work of Baudrillard, including most recently, The Spirit of Terrorism. Contents Integral Reality * At the Margins of the Real * The World in its Deep Illusoriness * The Easiest Solutions--Do you want to be free?--Do you want to be anyone else? * The Murder of the Sign * The Mental Diaspora of the Networks * We are All Agnostics * The Violence Done to the Image * Contemporary Art Contemporary with Itself * Virtuality and Events * Evil and Misfortune * The Intelligence of Evil * For Whom does the Bell of Politics Toll? * The Destruction of the Golden Pavilion * Duality's Revenge * Fracture Lines * Parallel Universes--Existential Divide--Time Divide * Anamnesis.

www.bergpublishers.com

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The Gulf War Took Place, But then Again ...

The Gulf War Did Not Take Place

By

Matt Terry

Military, November 27, 2008

(A theory based essay looking at the conspiracies and media cover ups involved in the gulf war and the recent Iraq war referring in detail to the work of John Baudrillard.)

September the 11th, 2001. This date needs no explanation. In fact you would be pretty hard pressed to find a single person in the western world that that date does not bare significance to. The events that took place on that day and the events that became from it have reshaped the world we live in and changed the way we live our lives to date.

‘Within hours of the apocalyptic events of September 11, headline writers, pundits and politicians were agreed on one thing: the world had changed forever’ -- The Guardian (October 11th, 2001) Has The World Changed? Available At: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/11/afghanistan Accessed on 2008-05-29)

In Baudrillards book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, he deemed that the first Gulf War as fraudulent, ‘Since this war was won in advance, we will never know what it would have been like had it existed. We will never know what an Iraqi taking part with a chance of fighting would have been like’ -- Baudrillard, J. (1991), The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Indiana University Press: p. 61.

So the war was fraudulent as there was never actually a true conflict during the Gulf War as America won before the first bullet was fired. Also fraudulent refers to the fact that invading any country unprovoked directly violates the United Nations terms of war.

In the same sense as this, two fraudulent wars were started on the day of September 11th 2001.
The first being war in the literal sense, the invasion of Iraq by the coalition forces, a war fought by soldiers on a battlefield.

The second, the war that is still raging strong today, a war that is being fought not on a battlefield but within in the minds of society on a day to day basis, ‘The War On Terror’.

Forgetting for a minute the literal meaning of the word war, both of these wars to us have been presented to us in the same way and fought with the same weapon. By this I mean the weapon of propaganda.

The purpose of propaganda in a situation like this is gain public backing for the issue at hand, in this instance war. However this often comes at the cost of exaggerating, misleading and even lying about the issue to gain that support.

‘In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies’ -- Winston Churchill (the second world war) Available at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/w/winston_churchill.html Accessed on 2008-05-29).

Propaganda has always been a potent tool of war, most notably when it was harnessed to its full potential by the Nazis during the World War II. “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie … The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state.” -- Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945.

This was the first time that propaganda was ever used to this extent, the first time that it moved from merely being a form of persuasion to being a form of ‘brainwashing’ and the propaganda we are being subjected to now is no exception to this idea.

The first time that this really became apparent to us was during the first Gulf War. In respect of the media and propaganda there was something that made the first Gulf War very special and very different to any other wars of previous years. This was the fact that it was the first ever fully televised military campaign, though there had been Vietnam prior to this it was nowhere near on the same scale in terms of media coverage.

For the first time ever the public could tune in and actually watch the war being fought. ‘For the first time people all over the world were able to watch live pictures of missiles hitting their targets and fighters taking off from aircraft carriers’.GNU Free Documentation License. (June 3rd 2003) Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GulfWarMedia. (Accessed on 2008-06-09).

This mass media coverage was a huge advantage to the coalition governments as it allowed them to show their people how their war was being fought. The war was promoted as being a surgical or clean war, ‘A cost-free victory. A push-button, remote-control war won without casualties. Surgical strikes that wipe out military targets while sparing civilians’ -- Thomas. (1991) Media Coverage Of The Persian Gulf war. Available At: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/33253/media_coverage_of_the_persian_gulf.html?page=2&cat=37. (Accessed On: 2008-06-09)

The news constantly projected positive images of the war. There were various articles describing the different types of advanced technologies that were winning us the war. Things such as stealth planes, ATACMS, cruise missiles and virtual reality helmets, the news were constantly showing the public exactly how these weapons are supposed to work and what an excellent job they were doing.

“Now the Tomahawk seems to be giving new meaning to the term guided missile, with an accuracy that the CNN-addicted public has found breathtaking. Of the first 52 Tomahawks fired, the military reported 51 hit home. By the end of the war’s third week, some 300 of the $1.3 million Tomahawk cruise missiles have been fired at Iraq."-- John Schwartz. (1991). Newsweek. Available At: http://www.newsweek.com/id/133595. (Accessed On: 2008-06-10 )

Unfortunately however, this was propaganda in its element and the war that we knew and were all being subjected to was not quite the war that was actually being fought. The news and the media neglected to mention the instances in which the best laid plans and so called surgical strikes went horribly wrong and innocent thousands of innocent people lost there lives.

“By now it should be clear to anyone that claims of a surgical or a precise war are no more than the kind of excuses which the guilty always give to deflect blame elsewhere. The destruction of Iraq was near total and it was criminal, The only way to describe what happened there would be a killing frenzy.” -- Paul Walker (May 11, 1991). Director of the Institute for Peace and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available At: http://deoxy.org/wc/wc-myth.htm (Accessed On: 2008-06-10)

This is what Baudrillard meant by saying ‘The Gulf War Did Not Take Place’. He did not literally mean that there wasn’t a Gulf War, he meant that the war as we knew the war to be didn’t actually happen.

‘Fake war, deceptive war, not even the illusion but the disillusion of war, a suffocating atmosphere of deception and stupidity’ -- Baudrillard, J. (1991). The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, Indiana University Press: p. 68.

It was an extensive propaganda campaign and a number of tactics were used to hide from us what was really happening and influence our judgment.

It was once said that the first casualty of in times of war is the truth. Propaganda techniques are employed such as decontextualizing violence, only showing us selective stories and giving us partial facts, Manichaeism, portraying one side as good and demonizing the other as ‘evil’.
Information obtained from, 7 Elements Of Cyberer’s Propaganda Strategy Exposed & Demolished. (June 5th 2008) Available At: http://www.islamonline.net/discussione/thread.jspa?messageID=135409. (Accessed On: 2008-06-10).

The Gulf War we knew was not a real war, it was a virtual war, a simulation of war, a propaganda campaign tailor made to meet the exact specifications required. Now nearly a decade on we find ourselves in the exact same situation.

We are in the midst of another virtual war, by this I mean the propaganda masterpiece known as ‘The War On Terror’.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush has told and repeated a lie. It is a mega-lie, and the people have come to believe it. It is the ‘War on Terror’.

Richard. W. Behan. (September 27th, 2007). Available At: http://enigmaobscura.newsvine.com/_news/2007/09/28/990788-the-mega-lie-called-the-war-on-terror-a-masterpiece-of-propaganda (Accessed On: 2008-06-10)

The ‘War On Terror’ is part of the same campaign of propaganda we have previously been subjected to. Its existence is virtual, it is a simulation designed to influence not only our judgement but how we feel and behave toward a number of pressing current issues that are presented to us through the media.

‘Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.' -- Baudrillard, J. (1994) The Precession of Simulacra, University of Michigan Press: p. 01.

The atrocities which occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, provided certain governments with a spectacular opportunity. The western masses were confused, outraged and scared.

9/11 provided a smokescreen to hide the true intentions of certain governments and gain the support of the public.

Within hours of the attacks, President Bush declared the United States “… would take the fight directly to the terrorists,” and “… he announced to the world the United States would make no distinction between the terrorists and the states that harbor them.” Thus the “War on Terror” was born. -- Richard. W. Behan. (September 27th, 2007) Available At: http://enigmaobscura.newsvine.com/_news/2007/09/28/990788-the-mega-lie-called-the-war-on-terror-a-masterpiece-of-propaganda. (Accessed On: 2008-06-10)

The tragic events of 9/11 were the reason for the launch and the justification of the ‘War On Terror’, now it in turn is and has been used to justify a myriad of political decisions to the eyes of the public, and rally support for a number of different war agendas.

The news constantly promotes the idea of Al Qaeda and the Taliban creating villainous images of characters like Osama Bin Laden and Abu Hamza.

We are led to believe that one man, based in one of the world’s poorest countries managed to outsmart the richest, most powerful and one of the most advanced nations in the world. Millions of people have been misled regarding the causes and consequences of September 11.

‘When people across the US and around the World find out that Al Qaeda is not an outside enemy but a creation of US foreign policy and the CIA, the legitimacy of the bipartisan war agenda will tumble like a deck of cards’ -- Chossudovsky M. (2005) America’s “War on Terrorism,” Global Research, p. 29.

We are forever being subjected to this idea of an outside enemy, an evil force that needs to be stopped. An illusion is being created that western civilisation is constantly under threat.

The ‘War On Terror’ is simply a propaganda campaign being used to drum up an atmosphere of fear and moral panic.

This fear is then being exploited and used to legitimise the use of military action and the waging of fraudulent wars against ‘rogue countries’ and divert public attention from what is really happening. It is more of a war of terror than a war on terror.

The really sad fact is that all of this really boils down to one thing in the end, profit. Money is power, and the economical benefits of waging a war real and virtual/televised are so vastly beneficial for the government and such a large number of various industries and corporations that instigating certain agendas and prolonging them for as long as possible is actually a very positive thing to them, in spite of what they try and make us believe.

“War is unpredictable, which is why it makes for an ideal tool to get away with murder while making a profit for years afterward. The people must never take their granting permission to wage war lightly. Once war is declared the status quo or life as normal rapidly changes. All wars are manufactured and those that benefit the most from war are the ones most complicit in instigating it; the ones that sell it the strongest” -- Tribal Messenger (2003) Order of Chaos. Available At: http://www.tribalmessenger.org/war/war-on-terror.htm. (Accessed On: 2008-06-11)

As well as the benefits that are created from the point of view of manufacturing a propaganda campaign, there is also a great economical benefit to waging a televised military campaign or virtual war.

This is the pure and simple fact that it is not an actual war, it costs practically nothing. Real wars initially cost billions. The economical ramifications of waging a real war are outrageously obscene.

For the recent Iraq war, “one estimate puts the total economic impact at up to $2 trillion.” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11880954.

Creating the illusion of war however is practically cost free. The cost of the necessary equipment required to elicit a televised war such as a T.V studio and cameras is miniscule in comparison. There is also the publicity that is given whilst broadcasting a televised war to be taken into account. For one reason or another, people are fascinated by war.

Millions of people tune in to watch developing conflicts oblivious to the fact that they are essentially buying a product, caught up in a cycle of publicity, promotion and propaganda.

“the media promote the war, the war promotes the media and advertising competes with the war” (1991: 31).

We are living in an age where we are being constantly blindsided by the media, forever caught up in a reign of deception that is used to cloud our judgments and alter our perceptions.

Feelings are manufactured and exploited. Propaganda is used to create moral panics as distractions just so governments can do as they please and hope no one will notice whatever the cost maybe, millions, billions, trillions or the greatest cost of all, the cost of humanity.

socyberty.com

The Theme

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Did It OR Did It Not? . . .

The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, a book by Jean Baudrillard, is a collection of three essays published in Libération and the Guardian between January and March 1991. Contrary to the provocative title, the author believes that the events and violence of the Gulf War actually took place, whereas the issue is one of interpretation: were the events that took place comparable to how they were presented, and could these events be called a war? The title is a reference to the play The Trojan war will not take place by Jean Giraudoux (in which characters attempt to prevent what the audience knows is inevitable).

The essays in Libération and the Guardian were published before, during and after the Gulf War and they were titled accordingly: During the American military and rhetorical buildup as "The Gulf War Will not take Place"; during military action as "The Gulf War is not Taking Place", and after action was over, "The Gulf War Did Not Take Place". A book collecting the original articles in French was published in 1991. The English translation was published in early 1995.`

Baudrillard argues that the style of warfare used in the Gulf War was so far removed from previous standards of warfare that it existed more as images on RADAR and TV screens than as actual hand-to-hand combat, that most of the decisions in the war were based on perceived intelligence coming from maps, images, and news, than from actual seen-with-the-eye intelligence (Baudrillard 2001, 29-30).

Most provocatively, Baudrillard argues that the startlingly one-sided nature of the conflict (fewer US soldiers were killed in this 'war' than would have died in traffic accidents had they stayed at home) means that it should not be seen as a war, simply because the US-led coalition chose not to engage with the Iraqi army or to take the kind of risks that constitute war (Baudrillard 1995, 69). The US-led coalition was fighting a virtual war while the Iraqis tried to fight a traditional one - the two could not entirely meet (Baudrillard 1995, 69). A great deal of violence took place, but the Gulf War did not; rather than belittling the effects of this violence, this means that the Gulf War should be seen not as a war but as "an atrocity masquerading as war" (Merrin 1994, 447).

One of the points that Baudrillard tries to make with this book is that what's considered real is now simply images of what is real: we see "a masquerade of information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the image, the image of an unintelligible distress" (Baudrillard 2001, 40). This is a challenge to the tendency of many people to absolutely believe what they see on their screens. This point also works in with another of Baudrillard's claims that the war was so heavily edited when it was shown on television that what Americans saw wasn't even close to the real war. He arrived at this conclusion after talking with many soldiers about what really happened on the ground.

All this finally comes back to the title of the book, which we now see as his claim that, despite the massive bloodshed in the Gulf in 1991, no war took place there. That the 'Gulf War' did not take place is an important and controversial point to make. Critique of this idea takes into account that if it was not a war, it was a situation of violence, and people were killed and wounded during its course of events, regardless of those events' names.

wikipedia.org/The_Gulf_War_Did_Not_Take_Place