Imagining the Next War: Infrastructural Warfare and the Conditions of Democracy

[jamesd at echeque.com]

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On 14 Sep 2001, at 20:58, keyser-soze at hushmail.com wrote:
> War is the health of the State.

Terrorism is a good pretext for taking away our rights.

A war to destroy terrorist regimes is a less good pretext, 
and if it succeeds, will remove one pretext.   The end of the 
war will also spark a demand for a return to normality, 
similar to the anti socialist wave we saw in many english 
speaking countries at the end of World War II.  Socialism, 
introduced under the pretext of war, was discredited by its 
association with the privation and authoritarianism of war.

> War in the old conception was temporary: the idea was 
> explicitly that the state of war would end, and that the 
> normal rules of democracy would resume once their 
> conditions had been reestablished.

What George Bush is promising, truthfully or untruthfully, is 
just such a war.  A war where the good guys storm into the 
bad guy's presidential palace, and then come home to a 
victory parade, where upon everything returns to normal.

All wars are bad for freedom, but the war that George Bush 
promises is far less bad for freedom than unending terrorism.

Of course the previous Bush promised "read my lips, no new
taxes." 

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         James A. Donald
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