The Question Isn’t if the Gulf War Took Place, but Rather how it Affects Us

Quotes I chose...

"The Iraqis blow up civilian buildings in order to give the impression of a dirty war. The Americans disguise satellite information to give the impression of a clean war. Everything in trompe l’oeil [i.e., visual illusion]!" (62)

"Information has a profound function of deception. It matters little what it “informs” us about, its “coverage” of events matters little since it is precisely no more than a cover: its purpose is to produce consensus by flat encephalogram… And if people are vaguely aware of being caught up in this appeasement and this disillusionment by images, they swallow the deception and remain fascinated by the evidence of the montage of this war with which we are inoculated everywhere: through the eyes, the senses and in discourse." (68)

"There are ironic balance sheets which help to temper the shock or the bluff of this war. A simple calculation shows that. of the 500,000 American soldiers involved during the seven months of operations in the Gulf, three times as many would have died from road accidents alone had they stayed in civilian life.* Should we consider multiplying clean wars in order to reduce the murderous death toll of peacetime?" (69)

The most important part of these quotes to me is the “visual illusion” portion. With the advent of technology and the expanded scale of modern warfare, now more than ever war seems more distant to everyone. No longer is there a direct fear of “the British are coming” (i.e. enemies invading the US directly and taking over our cities) but rather the constant threat of small terrorist acts. In this case, Baudrillard makes a point as to the nature of modern combat, and its ambiguity. Information can mean multiple things, and we must rely totally upon interpretation (an extremely subjective manner) of data to discover patterns. Moreover, she makes the point of altering information to one’s wishes, in this case the Iraqis making the war “dirty” and the US making it “clean”. This proves another reference that due to the distance that modern war is fought on, and the fact that the target audience/citizens do not all directly participate (only a small subset of the population), people rely upon an authoritative source to inform them of the “truth”.

This ties in with the second quote (information alteration), and with the example of photo fakery that we saw before. In summary, these are some of the most effective methods of public control, and the subtle shifting of public opinion is one major part of modern society (and thus, modern warfare).

On the final quote, I think Baudrillard has a very interesting point that brings into play the ac fo statistics. It is in fact true that the very act of driving somewhere is going to be the most dangerous part of your day. So I can see where she says that 3x times as many would have died simply from driving than combat. Yet, her statistic only includes actual mortality. In modern warfare, the biggest “causality” is the mental state of those involved. Everyone who returns from war has some kind of psychological damage, and this also does not take into account the large number of injuries, all due to the shifting nature of war to a more guerilla style combat, rather than all-out skirmishes where waves of soldiers died. With this taken into account, it is hard to agree with her point that military action brings people out of harms way. It is clear to me that it may not necessarily be increasing their harm, but rather just changes the source. In today’s society, the society itself is by its very nature dangerous to all involved (everyone), and there is nothing that really changes except for the very source of the danger; i.e. danger is always present no matter where you are.

-Miheer

9/19/09