Our new mode of war

Michael Ventura at the Austin Chronicle has a keen sense of observation when it comes to America at war. In 2004 he wrote that "war is how civilizations make love," and his argument seemed sound to me. ("Lessons of Guernica")

In his December 4th column Ventura describes the changes in how we fight as a nation. No longer waging total war, we now seem to mire ourselves in endless conflicts:

In World War II the phrase often employed was "total war." Every walk of life participated in combat. Every citizen sacrificed for the effort. We paid for that war with higher taxes and war bonds. The objective was clear: "unconditional victory."

Now we have two mutually supporting strategies or models of war – and this has been true since at least the onset of the Vietnam conflict.

The primary, announced model is medical, as in surgery or therapy: We'll go in, heal the patient's ailment, fix what needs fixing, and leave. When we leave, everything is supposed to be better. Whatever the rhetoric, in reality victory is defined therapeutically – not winning, but solving a problem.

The underlying model, however, is very different: addiction. No matter what, and no matter the cost, we'll keep on doing what hasn't worked until it does. That is the very definition of addiction, with addiction's financial rule: If we don't have the money (and we don't), we'll beg, borrow, and become debt slaves until what can't be done is done.

They say everything goes faster now, and that's largely true of everything but war. With these co-enabling models of therapeutic and addictive war, war continues in a kind of slow motion. The objective is vague. It's often hard to tell who the enemy really is. The front line is everywhere and nowhere. We suffer far fewer casualties (partly because medical attention is better and more immediate), but war goes on and on and on.

Global Guerrillas explores this idea of limited war more fully in a post from 2006.