The Next War

[G_j]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/08/05

Published on Thursday, August 5, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

The Next War

by Robert Koehler

"I'm going to be killing people. I'm actually joining the Marines and will be doing this in real life."

<snip>

With Adm. Mike Mullen's ambivalent acknowledgment several days ago on "Meet the Press" that the military indeed has a plan for invading Iran, to be used if necessary, "the next war" has begun, suddenly, to take shape in the media. No public input needed! We're the spectators here. Stay tuned. We'll bring it to you live.

Missing, of course -- of course! -- in any discussion of a no-nonsense military solution to Iran's nuclear intransigence is: A) the least reflection on the disastrous quagmire of the current wars, which were sold as quick-strike operations to eliminate immediate threats (which, in the case of Iraq, turned out not to exist); B) any assessment of the damage we have done, to the Afghans, the Iraqis or ourselves, or of the multi-trillion-dollar cost of these debacles; C) any reflection on our own hypocrisy (we have 5,113 nuclear warheads; our allies, including Israel, have as much as a thousand more), or a consideration of the logic of Iran's own self-protective instincts, i.e., that if they actually possess a bomb the U.S. is far less likely to invade their country.

Instead what we get is the grown-up, Ph.D.-level equivalent of the naïve 18-year-old Marine wannabe playing war at the Army's entrapment, I mean recruitment, center in Philadelphia. Effective, targeted strikes! This'll be awesome!

But more worrisome to me than neocon op-eds is the sense of inevitability -- indeed, reverence -- that accompanies "impartial" mainstream reportage of war, especially the war that hasn't been fought yet. The unspoken understanding is that war is a high-level, classified decision made in the public's interest but utterly divorced from its input or wishes.

In an essay published on AlterNet in March, Frank Joyce wrote: "Thanks to the superseding power of the transnational corporation, democracy ‘peaked' in the United States some time ago."


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