The Sweet Serenity Of Modern Warfare

K19 January, 2010 | 

[print_link]

The successful execution of America’s Eternal War of the Empty Policy does not require toughness or resolve. All it requires is that those in charge achieve a sublime state of moral nihilism that transcends good and evil.

Slaughter is sanitized. A clean-cut young man sits at his laptop somewhere in Nevada and with his mouse directs the course of an unmanned drone until a collection of hovels is in his sights. He clicks the mouse and in a flash, the hovels are no more. He closes his laptop, goes home to his family and gets a good night’s sleep. He’s put in a good day, and he sleeps blissfully unaware of the death and destruction he has wrought.

Moral nihilism works best in value-free individuals. This emptiness is achieved when the ties that bind an individual to family and community are severed. Into the void that remains pour the facile symbols of the state, symbols that are effective because they have been stripped of their original meaning until they are empty shells that resonate with meaning in individuals who are also empty shells. The best example of this is the American flag lapel pin. This once proud symbol of freedom and democracy now signifies the moral void that has made the United States a hegemonic wonder to behold.

Funeral of the latest drone attack victims.Note: White flags are flying only to avoid another terrorist strike by the US-Pakistan joint command on innocent civilians.  Thirty people died in the latest attack. Attacking weddings, funerals, caravans and weekly village fairs with its deadly arsenal of missiles and killing civilians isn’t something new for the US armed forces in Afghanistan. In fact, this is a major reason for the rising sentiment against the US-led foreign forces in the country.

To reach its peak efficiency, moral nihilism requires an environment in which nobody is in charge. Instead of a single evil mastermind, there is a collective mass consensus that is more reminiscent of a pool of toxic sludge than a grand conspiracy. Its driving force is a blind momentum that drifts along more from habit than resolve. Any attempt to think outside the box is thwarted because the box is constantly growing and expanding so the mind is never able to step outside of its confines.

Language, stripped of passion, is the medium of this moral nihilism. The language of the nihilist doesn’t sing, it drones. Here is an example of its poetry:

The emptiness of this passage rests in the absence of a child attracted to an unexploded bomblet. Nowhere is there a photograph of the child after the bomblet has exploded. The prose sits in a state of pure innocence which reduces war to little more than a video game.