Weapons of War :: Essays Papers

Weapons of WarWar on Iraq and sexual identity showcase illustrative new tactics for contemporary politics. If you cant beat em, join em. In conventional warfare. The US armament no longer needs atomic weapons for its better-publicized outings when theyve built a 10-ton conventional bomb and arent above firebombing civilian centers. At a moment when anti-militarist criticism had crystallized around activism against specialized forms of military machinery (the Bradley was too expensive, the School of the Americas too brutal, the nuke too indiscriminate), all such criticism can be blown with the broadcasted desert winds to the opponent and yanked on for leverage - thus permitting/demanding all the kinds of actions (with or without marked technologies) that were the initial object of criticism. Now its Iraq who has dangerous WMDs, not the US (a rustic with a nuclear policy of first strike against non nuclear nations). What may once have been a criticism of military violence bec ame one of the weapons themselves (Depleted atomic number 92 Bullets, land mines, space weapons, bunker-busters), and now we shall fight clean against an enemy who (gasp) might not. Just as the crime becomes the criminal, Saddam becomes his weapons programs he is a homicidal authoritarian who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction (Bush). Programs that are mostly despicable because they arent supposed to have these weapons (according to international agreements, and sometimes early 90s US mandates, to which, of course, US policy and rhetoric always shows such commitment). The trick is simultaneous with, and analogous to, the more obvious game of peace versus threat. We are resolved today, to demonstrate every threat, from any source, that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America (Bush), except threats from America, naturally. But, the weapon issue focuses on technologies in a way that makes the dickens rhetorical devices non-homologous and makes weapons more rel evant here, because the question is not just of representations but also of instruments.Such conditions are not governed by bankers rules of an economy of force-out (we get some percent more, you get so much less), or by a monarchical power that runs roughshod over (innocent) individuals, trampling the parking area grass of knowledge. Rather, the bankers rules matter in the bank, and work only if there is a commitment to the illusion of the bank. Go ahead, tell Bush he isnt a good king, he isnt using power responsibly.