Although I am horrified and angered at the recent
events, I feel we should resist emphatically the
recent polemic imperatives of battle. This point was
given a new urgency for me when I realized that in
less than 9 months I will be forced to sign a draft
card. The utter futility of seeking to battle such
unconventional warfare with a WWII-era battle
narrative can be exemplified by our failure in the
Vietnam War.
"It is impossible here to convey the full scope and
depth of this counterstrategy of the (non-European)
'other.' But perhaps the essence of its otherness can
be suggested by invoking some of the most persistent
reactions to it by those American soldiers actually
fighting the war in Vietnam. As opposed to the
ideologically compelled confidence of the government
bureaucracy in Washington and the Military Command in
Saigon (MACV) which were conducting it from an
enormous topological and mental -- one might say
'panoptic' distance from the human carnage, the
immediately engaged American soldier was confused
('spooked') and frustrated by the uncanny invisibility
of the 'enemy':
I saw cruelty and brutality I didn't expect from our
people against the villagers...In this type of
fighting it was impossible to know who the enemy was
at any one time...
To evoke the terms of posthumanist theory...the
counterstrategy of the NLF and the NVA could be said
to constitute a deliberate refusal to accommodate the
imperative of presence informing the cultural,
political, and military practices of the United
States. American military tactics and practice were
determined by a 'technological' -- end-oriented and
ethnocentric -- mindset that perceived the
differential complexities of Vietnamese life and the
actual conditions of the war (the 'problem') in
spatial or panoptic terms. It was a perspective that
represented the dislocating otherness as a microcosmic
'world picture' or (tactical) map in which ever
resistant (differential) thing/event could be, in the
term Heidegger employs to characterize the essence of
technology, 'enframed' (Gestell) or, in Foucault's
term 'disciplined' -- compelled into its proper place
in the gridded whole and pacified -- and reduced to
'standing reserve' (Bestand) or 'useful and docile
body' (the 'solution'). In opposition the NLF and NVA
simply obscured this representational map, blurred the
categorical distinctions necessary to the restrictive
narrative economy of the panoptic gaze."
(WilliamSpanos, Heidegger and Criticism, 1993,
p.200-1)
The parallels in the (counter)strategy of terrorism
and Vietnam are obvious. The "enemy" refuses to become
"mappable" (as demonstrated by the failed attempt at
killing Bin Laden by bombing his terrorist camps) or
to restrict the "war" into a narrative structure
(having a beginning, middle, and end). The leadership,
military, and citizenry have become terrified at the
aspect of this (counter)strategy which defies the
Occidental framework ultimately culminating in brutal
policies. The terrorists fail to whither under the
leveling gaze of our foreign policy panopticon.
Spanos later details the destruction of the Vietnamese
rice culture when the US a tore out their rice fields
and planted a new "better" (more nutritional) kind of
rice. What the US neglected was the fact that
Vietnamese culture was based on a specific method of
rice cultivation. Our technocratic mindset allowed us
only to perceive rice as a food-crop, neglecting the
value it had to the Vietnamese and ultimately
destroying their culture. Similarly, the US's cultural
exportation of our "liberated" (lol) sexual practices
and bourgousie materialism are destroying the Islamic
culture (whether "liberating" Islamic women is right
or wrong is debatable, but such practices definitely
create resentment.)
Again I want to emphasize that none of this is meant
to legitimize the brutal acts of 9/11, but merely to
remove the state from its favored position as the sole
site of legitimate violence, and to force us to
recognize the role the US plays in the creation of the
horrors of the last week.
__________________________________________________
Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help?
Donate cash, emergency relief information
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/
events, I feel we should resist emphatically the
recent polemic imperatives of battle. This point was
given a new urgency for me when I realized that in
less than 9 months I will be forced to sign a draft
card. The utter futility of seeking to battle such
unconventional warfare with a WWII-era battle
narrative can be exemplified by our failure in the
Vietnam War.
"It is impossible here to convey the full scope and
depth of this counterstrategy of the (non-European)
'other.' But perhaps the essence of its otherness can
be suggested by invoking some of the most persistent
reactions to it by those American soldiers actually
fighting the war in Vietnam. As opposed to the
ideologically compelled confidence of the government
bureaucracy in Washington and the Military Command in
Saigon (MACV) which were conducting it from an
enormous topological and mental -- one might say
'panoptic' distance from the human carnage, the
immediately engaged American soldier was confused
('spooked') and frustrated by the uncanny invisibility
of the 'enemy':
I saw cruelty and brutality I didn't expect from our
people against the villagers...In this type of
fighting it was impossible to know who the enemy was
at any one time...
To evoke the terms of posthumanist theory...the
counterstrategy of the NLF and the NVA could be said
to constitute a deliberate refusal to accommodate the
imperative of presence informing the cultural,
political, and military practices of the United
States. American military tactics and practice were
determined by a 'technological' -- end-oriented and
ethnocentric -- mindset that perceived the
differential complexities of Vietnamese life and the
actual conditions of the war (the 'problem') in
spatial or panoptic terms. It was a perspective that
represented the dislocating otherness as a microcosmic
'world picture' or (tactical) map in which ever
resistant (differential) thing/event could be, in the
term Heidegger employs to characterize the essence of
technology, 'enframed' (Gestell) or, in Foucault's
term 'disciplined' -- compelled into its proper place
in the gridded whole and pacified -- and reduced to
'standing reserve' (Bestand) or 'useful and docile
body' (the 'solution'). In opposition the NLF and NVA
simply obscured this representational map, blurred the
categorical distinctions necessary to the restrictive
narrative economy of the panoptic gaze."
(WilliamSpanos, Heidegger and Criticism, 1993,
p.200-1)
The parallels in the (counter)strategy of terrorism
and Vietnam are obvious. The "enemy" refuses to become
"mappable" (as demonstrated by the failed attempt at
killing Bin Laden by bombing his terrorist camps) or
to restrict the "war" into a narrative structure
(having a beginning, middle, and end). The leadership,
military, and citizenry have become terrified at the
aspect of this (counter)strategy which defies the
Occidental framework ultimately culminating in brutal
policies. The terrorists fail to whither under the
leveling gaze of our foreign policy panopticon.
Spanos later details the destruction of the Vietnamese
rice culture when the US a tore out their rice fields
and planted a new "better" (more nutritional) kind of
rice. What the US neglected was the fact that
Vietnamese culture was based on a specific method of
rice cultivation. Our technocratic mindset allowed us
only to perceive rice as a food-crop, neglecting the
value it had to the Vietnamese and ultimately
destroying their culture. Similarly, the US's cultural
exportation of our "liberated" (lol) sexual practices
and bourgousie materialism are destroying the Islamic
culture (whether "liberating" Islamic women is right
or wrong is debatable, but such practices definitely
create resentment.)
Again I want to emphasize that none of this is meant
to legitimize the brutal acts of 9/11, but merely to
remove the state from its favored position as the sole
site of legitimate violence, and to force us to
recognize the role the US plays in the creation of the
horrors of the last week.
__________________________________________________
Terrorist Attacks on U.S. - How can you help?
Donate cash, emergency relief information
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/fc/US/Emergency_Information/